


In Darkness Unbroken

by kitsunealyc



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Alternate Canon, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-10-08 10:13:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 50,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10384368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsunealyc/pseuds/kitsunealyc
Summary: There is no justice for elves in Ferelden. Kier Tabris has always known this, so when he kills a noble in self-defense, he is resigned to a swift and brutal execution. Instead, he gets a second chance and an impossible task: save the world or kill himself trying.This is a Dragon Age: Origins gamefic with all of the warden origins showing up, various plot hole fixes, and some tailoring of the plot to amp up the drama of a city elf origin.





	1. Alienage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This chapter includes sexual violence and attempted rape.

_Eyes sorrow-blinded, in darkness unbroken_

_There 'pon the mountain, a voice answered my call._

_"Heart that is broken, beats still unceasing,_

_An ocean of sorrow does nobody drown._

_You have forgotten, spear-maid of Alamarr._

_Within My creation, none are alone."_

 

—Canticle of Andraste, The Chant of Light

 

 

In the grey pearl-light before dawn, Denerim’s market district resembled a haunted village rather than the bustling hub of daylight hours. Slender elven figures in shreds and patches paced well-worn paths—not haunting, but hauling good for their merchant masters, setting up wares in shrouded stalls, trading gossip in hushed tones, the sort of necessary news that would see them through the day. Merchant Vedna’s mood was foul; she’d caught her husband out carousing again, so be wary of her fists and feet. Grocer Lariot had received a double shipment of rampion and might be generous in giving away any wilted greens he hadn’t sold by day’s end. The district guard had a new captain, so beware any overzealous soldiers hoping to win their new captain’s favor.

Kier Tabris crouched behind a locked display case in Merchant Rogart’s stall, keeping one ear perked for the gossip and the guard. The rest of his attention was on the soft, grating clicks of a poorly oiled lock as he teased it like a lover to open for him.

“ _Hamina, ‘ma vhen’an_ ,” he whispered to the recalcitrant tumblers. When they—understandably—didn’t respond to the endearment, he withdrew his feeler pick and coated it with oil before sliding it back in. Within moments, he’d coaxed the pins into place.

He grinned. Yes. Much like a lover.

The grey morning blushed pink at the edges, more light than dark now. Human voices interrupted Kier’s moment of triumph. They rose louder than a murmur; human merchants didn’t need to whisper or scurry like elven servants did. They arrived in twos and threes, dismissing their laborers, opening their stalls. Kier bit back a curse. He’d taken too long with the rusty old lock.

After a quick glance over the top edge of the case, he opened it and shoved sextants and octants and spying-glasses into a pack thick with darned patches. If Kier only took one or two items, old Rogart would blame one of his assistant elves for the petty theft. He’d have them beaten as he’d done only a few days ago when an astrolabe had gone missing.

But an entire case of merchandise gone, when only Rogart held the keys? The old shem and the guards would look elsewhere, and poor Felrith would have the money necessary to survive while he healed from his broken ribs.

Kier cleared the case and slid through the canvas at the rear of the stall. Shrugging the pack onto his back, he hurried down the stinking narrow passage that ran between stall-backs. A few rats scuttled out of his path. A torn-eared Tom with a squeaking mouse dangling from his teeth growled low in his chest before making a graceful leap to the awning above. Kier nodded in salute at his feline brother and turned down a side passage that spit out near the gates of Denerim’s alienage—

—and almost ran into a district guard who was poking his upturned nose through the burlap curtain at the end of the passage.

“Here now, boy. Who’re you to be back here?”

At least the guard had mistaken him for a shem youth. Kier kept to the shadows and wore a cap low over his ears for just that reason. But there was no answer that wouldn’t get him jailed and bring the wrath of the guards down on the alienage. Jogging two steps back, Kier turned and bolted the way he’d come.

The guard cursed and raised a shout for his fellows before giving chase. At least, he tried to give chase, but passages that were narrow for Kier were nigh-impassable for a shem in bulky armor. Kier turned and turned again, following a maze that he knew as well as he knew the back streets of the alienage.

He was coming up on another exit when something—a shadow, or the clink of metal on metal—made him skid to a stop and leap back. Just in time. A sword as thick as his arm tore through the ragged burlap curtain that divided the back ways from the main street. A different guard pushed through the opening, younger than the first and wearing the arm-band of a captain.

It was Kier’s turn to curse. He ran, but ahead rose the clanks and grunts from the first guard.

Well, there was more than one way to escape a couple of shems in heavy armor.

Taking a cue from the tomcat he’d seen, Kier caught a stall crossbeam, planted his foot against a thick pole, and used the leverage to spring up to the marketplace rooftops. Shouts echoed behind him. The beam creaked alarmingly when the captain tried to pull himself up. Kier dashed away before the fool broke it with his weight.

The market stalls sported rooftops of oiled canvas, too flimsy to hold even an elf’s weight. But if you were light enough and daring enough, you could navigate the supporting framework like a spider crossing its own web. Kier headed for the docks north of the Drakon, leading any pursuit away from the alienage. At market’s edge, he jumped to the more stable footing of the permanent buildings, rolled and came up running. The shouts of the guards faded as he disappeared into the morning grey.

He kept to the rooftops until he was well clear of the market. Once on the street, he removed his cap, loosened his long hair from its twist, shook it forward around his ears. A few strands fell across his eye, and he left them instead of pushing them back in annoyance. If the market guards searched this far, they’d be looking for a skinny, nondescript shem boy, not an adult elf with bright red hair and indeterminate gender.

He left the stolen goods with his regular fence—a dwarf who cared nothing for the conflicts between shems and elves—and instructed him to send the take to Kier’s cousin. Shianni would see that the money got to Felrith.

Mist still clung in the shadows between buildings when Kier emerged from his fence’s sunken basement shop, but the sun crested the rooftops. It caught Kier’s eyes, bright enough to make them water. Morning had come while they’d sorted through his take. Kier breathed deeply of chilly air not yet warmed by day and strolled toward the alienage, whistling.

He was halfway down the street before he remembered why today, of all days, he should be in his bed when his father came in to wake him.

“Fuck!” Earning more than a few glares, Kier broke into a flat run.

***

Shianni opened the door to the sleeping room just in time to catch Kier halfway through the window, and probably with a stupid look on his face. Her eyes widened and mouth opened, but snapped shut when he jerked a finger to his lips.

She nodded, her own lips tight with contained laughter. “Wake up, cousin,” she said, not yelling, but voice pitched to carry all the same. “Why are you still in bed? It’s your big day!”

Kier used the noise to scramble the rest of the way through the window. Shianni shut the door and came to help him off the floor.

“Today? Really? I swear, you don’t have the sense the Maker gave little green apples,” she hissed. This time, she’d pitched her voice low. “You’re supposed to be getting married in a few hours!”

Kier groaned. “Don’t remind me.” He stripped off his tunic and sark and headed for the washbasin. He didn’t have time to go for a full bath, but at least he could wash away the sweat from his unexpected morning run.

He thought he’d have more time to get used to the idea. More time to tease his cousin Soris, whose wedding had been scheduled for weeks. More time to skulk in alleyways and squeeze a bit of coin from well-off humans who bilked the elves of Denerim, be they servant or tenant or customer. More time to…

More time to convince his father that Kier preferred being a rebellious child to being a complaisant adult. Which was precisely why Cyrion was forcing the issue. Kier couldn’t see why his father thought it would have any effect. Marriage hadn’t settled his mother.

But Kier’s time was up. His betrothed had arrived early from Highever, and since the Chantry had already been paid to send an officiant for one wedding, didn’t it make sense for her to take care of the other one at the same time?

Water sloshed over the side of the basin when Kier threw the cloth more forcefully than necessary.

Shianni glanced over from where she’d been quietly laying out his wedding clothes. “I know it doesn’t help much, but I spent the maiden’s watch with Nesiara and Valora last night. Nesiara isn’t just beautiful. She’s nice. And nervous.”

Of course Shianni was more worried for his bride than for her own cousin. Kier snatched the thin shirt and close-fitting doublet from her and pulled them on with the same roughness that he’d washed with. “I won’t treat her poorly, if that’s what you’re worried about. I don’t blame her for any of this.”

Shianni turned her back while he pulled on the striped pantaloons. “No, you’re just going to do your best to anger the guards and get yourself arrested a few hours before your wedding.”

The pantaloons were a bit snug in the rear, but that’s what you got with wedding clothes that passed from household to household whenever there was a need. Soris had already laid claim to the main communal set. Everyone had agreed that it was lucky there was a second set to be had at all. There’d been no time for alterations.

Kier snorted. Lucky. Right. “I didn’t get caught. And Felrith will have reason to be grateful I went out this morning.” He sighed and closed his eyes. Recited the names of the gods of old Arlathan to calm himself, or at least the names his mother had sung to him at night in place to the usual Andrastian lullabies. When he spoke again, it was only with resignation. “You can turn around now.”

Shianni’s smile was more understanding than Kier’s surliness deserved. She bullied him into sitting on the bed and gathered up his hair—red, like hers, like Soris’, like almost everyone they were related to. Deftly, she braided it in the Orlesian style and tied it off with a bright blue ribbon.

“There.” She patted his cheek. “Now Nesiara will think she’s the lucky one.”

Kier rose and pulled her into a hug. “That’s a lie and we both know it. The real lucky one will be whoever marries you.”

“Hah. With my temper? Now who’s the liar?” Shianni’s elbow found his ribs, forcing him to turn the hug into a headlock.

The door opened on Kier digging his knuckle into Shianni’s scalp, while she did her best to kick his shins.

“That’s enough, children.” Cyrion’s tone was one of long-suffering. “If you’re finished, we do have a wedding to attend.”

And just like that, Kier’s spirits plummeted again. “Yes, father,” he mumbled, and trudged out to meet his doom.

***

Denerim’s alienage was large enough that not everyone came for the wedding, but it certainly felt like everyone was there. They gathered in the green around the thick trunk of the Vhenandahl, chatting amongst themselves and congratulating any member of the wedding party who happened to pass too close. Many had started drinking early. Kier spent an amusing few minutes wheedling a larger wedding gift from some of his friends. Aeleth was drunk enough to offer some advice for the marriage bed, but Kier had experienced firsthand what a shit lover Aeleth was, and so felt free to ignore him.

He fell into conversation with a woman from Highever, one of the attendants who’d come with Nesiara. She said she’d known his mother, but he was dragged away before she could tell him any tales. He did manage to steal a few quiet words with Nersa, his first love and the girl who’d taught him that his cock wasn’t the center of the world. Aeleth could have done to learn a bit from her.

“So, no Ostagar, then?” he asked.

Nersa smiled softly. “Thanks to you. Elder Valendrian helped us find something we can afford, so I’m off to unpack all the things we packed up yesterday. I’m sorry I can’t stay for the wedding.” She leaned close as though to kiss him, but stopped herself and instead grabbed his hands. “Be happy. No one deserves it more than you.”

Kier wished he could pass this particular happiness along as he had the silver he’d given to her, but he bit back the bitterness he’d been holding in all day and squeezed her hands in return.

And then there was the warden. Elder Valendrian tried to whisk him past the gathering without attracting attention, but it was hard to hide the presence of any human, much less one in armor and bristling with blades. Most of the wedding guests avoided the two men, but Kier had managed a few questions before Valendrian shooed him away. Kier wasn’t certain what confused him more: the quelling looks Valendrian had given him, or the speculative ones from the warden.

So. Kier’s mother had been considered for recruitment by the Grey Wardens. Kier wondered if Elder Valendrian had bustled Warden Duncan off as quickly at Adaia and Cyrion’s wedding.

“That would be one way to get out of this, I suppose,” said Soris, slinging an arm around Kier’s shoulders. “Bit extreme, though. Maybe you could run off and join the Dalish, instead.”

Kier batted away his cousin’s fingers before Soris could flick the swirling tattoo around Kier’s right eye. “I’m not running away,” he grumbled. Oh, he’d considered it. Briefly. But abandoning this duty meant leaving his home, his family. And he just couldn’t do that. They needed him. He needed them.

He glanced once more at the departing warden. He suspected his mother had once made a similar choice.

“That’s right. Accept your lot.” Soris squeezed his shoulder, sympathy at odds with his teasing words. “It’s not a bad one, as lots go. At least your bride is pretty. Mine’s more like a mouse.”

Kier might have scolded Soris for his mean-spiritedness, if he hadn’t noticed the shy, speculative looks that Soris had been casting Valora’s way since the day the betrothal was finalized.

“Have a taste for mice, do you Old Tom?” Kier pinched the lobe of Soris’ ear. Soris yelped and shoved away.

They might have fallen to tussling—it was more common with them than not—if Shianni hadn’t come up from behind and grabbed them both by the scruff. “Maybe you two should start acting like bridegrooms instead of boys?” She pushed them in the direction of an approaching huddle. The chantry priest, several of Kier’s cousins—all giggling—and Valora and Nesiara.

Fuck. Kier tugged on his doublet and shifted to loosen his tight pantaloons. He was vaguely aware of the others edging away to give them space, but most of his attention was on Nesiara. He’d only spoken a few, awkward words of greeting to her yesterday, before she’d been whisked off to join Valora’s maiden’s watch.

She was going to be his wife before they even managed a decent conversation.

Digging a fist into his belly to quell the butterflies, Kier sucked in a breath to say… something. A commotion on the edge of the crowd interrupted him before he could figure out what.

Kier pushed his way past the other guests. His cousin Nola was flinching away from a leering shem, and Shianni was gripping a bottle of sack wine as though she’d love nothing more than to smash it over the heads of the three men causing the problem.

“Now what’s going on here?” one of them said, blond and bearded and exactly the sort who approached tormenting elves as his right. “Aren’t there laws against rabbits congregating like this? I’ve heard they can multiply rapidly.”

“If there aren’t, you should fix that,” said the shem looming over Nola. The third one took a swig from a bottle and nodded.

“Perhaps I should. Unless someone wants to convince me otherwise.” The leader caught Shianni’s jaw and forced her face up as though examining an animal at market.

The chantry sister caught Kier’s arm and held him in place when he would have charged in. “My Lord, this is a wedding,” she snapped, stepping up to confront the shem holding Shianni.

He seemed undeterred by the threat of divine wrath. “Is it now? So this must be the groom.” He pushed the sister to one side and loomed over Kier. “You’re trembling like a proper rabbit, aren’t you? Look, lads. His face is as red as his hair.”

This close, Kier could smell the alcohol on the shem’s breath. He flexed his fingers, wishing for the knives he’d left hidden in the eaves above his bedroom window, but fighting with drunken shem never ended well. “You need to leave,” he said. At least his voice wasn’t shaking like the rest of him. “Or we’ll call the guard.”

It was an empty threat—when did the guard ever side with elves over their own kind—and the shem knew it.

“Oh, you will?” His chest bumped Kier’s, goading him. “Go ahead. Do you know who you’d be calling them on?”

A hurled bottle cracked against the side of the shem’s head. He stumbled a few paces, was steadied by one of his friends. Shrugging off the help, he snarled at his attacker.

“You heard him. Get out of here!” Shianni shouted, as flushed and trembling with rage as Kier was.

 “Are you insane?” screeched the third shem, the one who’d been hanging back. “That’s Vaughan Kendells. The Arl of Denerim’s son.”

The shem—Kendells—wiped away a trickle of blood coursing from his temple. He smiled. Cold fear washed the heat from Kier’s face. Shianni stumbled back a step. They traded a look. It was one thing to stand up against some unknown shem drunkard, but this…

Shit. Fuck. Kier gave Shianni another hard look— _Run!_ —and stepped between her and the Arl’s son.

“My Lord, she… we… we didn’t know. We’re sorry—”

“Oh, you will be. Guards!”

Four armored men in household colors shoved through the crowd. They must have come with Kendells and been waiting for his call, to arrive so soon. He’d come seeking to make trouble.

“My Lord,” one of the guards said.

“That bitch.” Kendells pointed at Shianni. “And the brides and their attendants. They’ll do.”

Soris blocked the guard when he reached for Valora. “Wait. No! She… the girls didn’t do anything…”

“You knife-ears have inspired me.” Kendells took a kerchief offered by one of his friends and wiped away the blood. “I suddenly feel like having a bit of a party myself. Bring the grooms too.” His words were directed at the guards, but his slow, cruel smile was all for Kier. “They can watch.”

Shianni’s shriek broke Kier out of his paralysis. He launched at Kendells with nothing but fists and fear. He never reached his target. A mailed gauntlet cracked across his cheek, and the world exploded into white pain, then darkness.

***

“Cousin. Cousin, get up.”

Kier shoved at Shianni’s prodding and tried to roll back under the covers. “Mmph. I know. Getting married. Jus’ few more minutes.” He must have slept with his face mashed into the hard ticking. His cheek felt swollen, and he couldn’t make his mouth work properly.

“Here. I’ve a bit of elfroot paste,” said another woman’s voice, one Kier didn’t know. “It should at least help with the swelling.”

“Thank you.”

Shianni was remarkably gentle as she smoothed something cool and tingling over Kier’s cheek. He groaned and flipped onto his back. A throbbing pain had started up, and with it came sense and memory. He opened his eyes. Several worried frowns hovered above him. Shianni, Soris, all the unwed cousins who’d volunteered to be bridesmaids. And Valora and Nesiara. The steady light from several lamps backlit them. Kier took a deep breath, expecting the stench of dungeons. Instead, he was assailed by the scent of linseed oil and beeswax, clean linens and fresh lavender.

“ _Fenedhis_.” Kier sat up and batted at the various hands trying to help him. “Well, I was about as useful as tit-molds on armor.” He didn’t have to ask where they were. It didn’t take a chantry scholar to realize that Kendells had brought them to the Arl’s estate. A glance around the room confirmed it. They were in some sort of linen closet, if linen closets came larger than the sleeping room Kier shared with his father.

Panic was returning along with Kier’s senses. He glanced around again, doing a quick count. All there, as far as he could tell. Kier grabbed Shianni and Soris’ hands, and they helped him to his feet.

“He hasn’t… nobody else is hurt, are they?” The _yet_ hung unspoken.

“He called in a healer for his… head.” Nesiara managed not to cast an accusing look at Shianni, but several of the bridesmaids weren’t so restrained. “He told the guards to bring Shianni once he’d had his supper.”

Shianni pressed her lips against a soft whimper. Kier suspected Kendells’ invitation hadn’t been phrased so nicely. The accusatory looks from the other women softened into concern and sympathy.

Kier couldn’t let Kendells take his vengeance out on Shianni, but there was little he could do once the guards came for her.

“Trade clothes with me.” Kier tore at the fasteners of his doublet, cursing the many buttons and the stiff, tiny buttonholes.  “The rest of you, far corner. And put out the lamps.”

“Wh-what?” Shianni blinked at him a moment before understanding dawned. “No. Kier, you can’t.”

“I’m a better fighter than you are. Maybe I’ll catch them with their pants down.” He grimaced at that unfortunate phrasing, knowing how likely it was to happen.

 _Better me than Shianni_. “Don’t just stand there gaping. Change! Does someone have a hat she can use?” He threw his shirt and doublet at Shianni. Any other time, he might have been bashful about stripping in front of so many women, even if he was related to most of them— _but not to Nesiara_ —but he didn’t have time. He left his boots on and struggled out of his pantaloons.

Nobody had moved. “Unless you all _prefer_ staring at me in my smalls?”

That got them moving. The bridesmaids started putting out the lamps. Valora helped Shianni into the groom’s clothes. Soris and Nesiara assisted Kier with getting his skirts and bodice in order.

“Here.” Nesiara draped her veil over Shianni’s hair and dragged her to the back corner where the others were huddled.

Soris stayed near the door with Kier. “Cousin, you’re sure about this—”

“No.” Kier’s snort darkened into a low laugh. He tugged the blue hair ribbon free and shoved it into his bodice. Loosening the braid, he shook his hair forward to hide his face. He’d just have to hope the shems didn’t look past the color, the ears, and the dress. “Why, you got a better idea?”

If Soris did, he wasn’t given time to share it. The door swung open. Two guards dragged Kier out of the closet and down a long hallway of grey stone.

***

Kier tracked their route through the Arl’s estate as best he could—when they turned, where other guards patrolled, the faces of the elven servants who scuttled away the moment they spied Kier and his escort.

Up a flight of stairs they went, and down a long gallery full of paintings of sneering shems. Kier was thrust into a room warm with firelight and filled with the scent of fresh baked bread and roasted meats. Lord Kendells and his two friends sat at a long table covered with more food than three men could possibly eat.

A boot to the back of his knee sent Kier sprawling on the floor at Kendells’ feet.

“Not so mouthy now, are you?” Kendells said. Kier kept his head down and his eyes fixed on the weave of the rug under his hands. He needed to play for time, find a way out of this, so he could get the others out.

“Yes, that’s more like it. Trembling and on your knees. Where’s your bottle now, bitch?” The toe of a boot caught under Kier’s chin, lifting it, forcing Kier’s gaze up to meet Kendells’. Kier jerked his head to one side, letting his hair fall to hide his face again. The longer he drew this out…

“What? Run out of things to say? And after screeching all the way here, too.” Kendells clicked his tongue.

“Maybe she’s thinking of better things to do with her mouth? I know I am.” That from one of Kendells’ friends. Kier’s fingers curled against the rug. This time, his trembles were as much fear as anger.

He had no use for fear. He forced it aside. He had to observe, analyze. Like this was a simple market stall theft.

The guards had left. That was good. It was just Kier, Kendells, and the two lords from before. All armed with daggers at their belts, true, but all well into their cups. He scanned the table, what he could see of it. Wine bottles, large wooden bowls and serving spoons, a multi-limbed candle holder, and—

Kier’s eyes widened. He swallowed a gasp at the sight of a long, deadly sharp carving knife, just out of reach.

“Is that it, bottle bitch?” Kendells asked. “You ready to say sorry without speaking?”

Kier’s answer emerged as a squeak when one of the other men came up behind him and lifted his skirts.

“You’re a brave man, Vaughan. Figure me and Jonaley’ll take our apologies from this end.” The slap on Kier’s ass sounded too loud, and Kier flinched more from noise and shock than from pain. “Fewer teeth.”

“I’m not concerned, Braden. I think she knows better than to bite now. What with all her friends still downstairs.” Kendells leaned forward and caught Kier’s chin before he could twist away. “Don’t you, Swee—what the fuck?”

Kier stopped trying to look away. There was no hiding what Kendells had seen. Kier’s brows and nose, stronger than Shianni’s delicate features, and the tattoo framing his right eye, from the days before Kier realized that anonymity could be a good thing.

“What is it?” The one called Braden stopped stroking and squeezing Kier’s ass.

“ _It_ … isn’t a woman. It’s the other one. The rabbit bridegroom.” Kendells’ fingers dug deep, reawakening the pain from Kier’s bruise. Kier kept his gaze steady, resisted glancing at the carving knife.

Kendells smiled. Laughed. “And he’s _crying_. Are you afraid, little rabbit bridegroom? Thought you’d come in place of your whore and we’d leave you alone when we realized it?”

From behind Kier rose more laughter. “Don’t see as it makes much of a difference from this end. Man’s as good as a woman for what I’ve in mind,” Braden said, and followed the threat with another slap.

Kendells dragged Kier’s lower lip down, forced his thumb into Kier’s mouth and slid it across his clenched teeth. “No, nor from this end.” He leaned close, wine-sour breath tickling Kier’s ear. “I feel one tooth, I’ll have them all ripped out.”

He seemed to be waiting for a response. Kier nodded and then couldn’t seem to stop himself from nodding.

Sitting up, Kendells started working on his belt. “Jonaley, you care to join us?”

Down at the other end of the table, the third shem raised a bottle. “Not my sort of fun, but you two go ahead.”

Braden’s belt—along with his dagger—clattered to the floor. Kendells’ hands and attention were tangled up in his own belt, and the one called Jonaley was half a room away. It was either now or wait until they were done raping him and hope that made them slow and stupid.

Kier chose now.

He tore out of Braden’s grip and launched at the carving board. Spinning with his momentum, he raised the carving knife and brought it around in a wide arc. It slashed low and deep across Braden’s bare, hairy belly, past the fat layer and into muscle and organs. Braden sagged to his knees, whimpering and clutching his guts. Stupid, shocked look on his face. The stink of shit flooded the room.

Diving for the belt on the floor, Kier drew Braden’s dagger and rolled to his feet. He faced off against Kendells, a blade in each hand.

Kendells rose to meet him, drawing his own blade, a longer, finer weapon than either of the ones Kier wielded. “You stupid fucking knife-ears never know when to just shut up and take it,” he growled. “I am going to gut you and string up every last one of your family.”

“That doesn’t really motivate me to shut-up and take it,” Kier said. Soft. Conversational. There was no point in taunting a dead man. Later, later he’d worry about what killing an Arl’s son would mean for him. For the alienage.

From off to one side, Kier caught a flash of movement. He fell back just as the third man—Jonaley—charged at him. A backslash with the dagger caught Jonaley at the hamstring. He collapsed, clutching his leg to hold back the gushing blood and bunched muscle.

“I suppose that makes you best of three, my Lord.” Right, so perhaps Kier was unable to resist a little taunting. “Or would that be worst?”

Instead of answering, Kendells lunged at Kier. Kier danced away, skirts swirling. And kept dancing, deflecting, dodging every slash of that blade. Kendells fought like a man trained by the best. Very elegant, very proper. And no match for an elf who’d blooded his blades on the worst Denerim had to offer. It ended with Kier on Kendells’ back, knives carving an X across his throat. Kendells fell back, trapping Kier underneath him. Twisting, shoving frantically, Kier wormed his way out from underneath and lurched to his feet. Kendells last words caught and popped in bubbles of blood.

Kier stood for a moment in the center of the carnage, shaking and swallowing down the urge to puke. The room was too bright, the scent of meat mixed with blood and shit clogged his nose and mouth. Despite the fire in the hearth, he was cold. So cold.

He fought back the whiteness at the edge of his vision. Forced himself to attend to minutiae. Vaughan Kendells was dead. Jonaley had bled out, or soon would. Braden moaned and clutched his belly. That gut wound would be a slow death. A merciful man might put him out of his misery.

Kier was not feeling particularly merciful. He dropped the borrowed dagger in favor of Kendells’ finer blade. Piercing a hole in his skirt, he slipped Kendells’ dagger through and let it hang by its hilt. Hopefully, nobody would notice it. Then he grabbed a wooden tray and loaded it with the remains of the meal—plates, cups, empty serving bowls, the last of the roast. And the carving knife.

He left the room and disappeared into the manor, just another elven serving girl going about her business.

***

Elder Valendrian and Warden Duncan were waiting to greet them when Kier and the others returned to the alienage. Behind them stood Kier’s father and a crowd of anxious wedding guests.

“Nola!” Tormey rushed forward to support his sobbing daughter, quickly followed by other worried parents and kin. Kier sidestepped his father’s attempt at an embrace. The thought of anyone touching him just now made him ill.

At Valendrian’s quiet suggestion, Soris took Valora and Nesiara back to the maiden’s house. The rest of the crowd dispersed. Every elf knew that it was safer not to linger when there was trouble. Soon, only Kier and Shianni remained of all those who’d been taken.

Elder Valendrian looked old. Tired. “I suppose it is too much to hope that you escaped without bloodshed?”

Kier couldn’t find it in himself to fake contrition. He was still in Shianni’s dress, could still feel Braden’s hands on his ass and Kendells’ thumb pressed into his mouth. He shivered and shoved those memories aside. “Lord Vaughan is dead. As are Lords Jonaley and Braden. And the guard watching the room where the others were held.”

“I’m impressed by your restraint,” Warden Duncan said, while the elder was still struggling to form a response. Valendrian cast the warden a sour look.

“Didn’t feel like restraint to me,” Kier said softly.

“What’s going to happen now?” Shianni asked. She’d grabbed a sword off the dead guard, but she’d had little cause to use it. Kier made certain of that.

Kier took the sword from her. “I imagine I’m going to have to leave Denerim for a while.”

Cyrion grabbed Kier’s shoulders. “No, you can’t leave. Elder, please—”

“Elder Valendrian!” A unit of Denerim’s finest tromped through the gates, led by a whitebeard with more stripes on his arm badge than a river bass. His gaze passed over the small gathering, stopped on Kier, and fixed on the blade Kier had taken from Shianni.

The greybeard commander sighed. In his own way, he looked as tired as Valendrian. “I gather you know about the troubles at the Arl’s estate? Lord Vaughan is dead and two of his vassals.” Another glance at Shianni and then, with a frown, at Kier. “If the guilty turn themselves in, there’ll be no need to search the alienage.”

Kier knew very well what a search would entail. He stepped forward and offered Shianni’s borrowed blade, hilt first. “It was me. I killed them.”

The commander took the sword, brow still beetled in puzzlement. “You alone?” He glanced again at Kier’s skirts. “We’d heard it was a woman, but—”

“A dress doesn’t make me a woman. I took my cousin’s place.”

The commander’s jaw tightened, and Kier could see every guard in the unit shift uncomfortably as they drew conclusions about what the switch meant.

Fine. Let them think the bloodshed was vengeance for a violation. It wasn’t entirely untrue, and maybe it would earn him some mercy in his treatment—before they executed him, at least.

“I see,” was all the commander said. Then, motioning to two of his men to take Kier, “It is good that you came forward on your own. We’ll see that justice is carried out swiftly—”

“That won’t be necessary, Commander.” Warden Duncan stepped forward, holding off the two guards by sheer presence. “I am invoking the Right of Conscription on this young man.”

The guards cast confused looks at their commander, who was regarding Warden Duncan with similar confusion.

As was Kier. “You’re what?”

“You’re what?” echoed the commander.

Kier couldn’t tell through the thick beard, but he suspected Warden Duncan was… smiling?

“Do I need to remind you that it is a Warden’s right to conscript anyone? This young man will accompany me to Ostagar as a Grey Warden. I believe fighting a Blight should be punishment enough, don’t you?”

“Oh. Well. Yes.” The commander scratched his beard as though looking for an argument in it. “I supposed that will have to satisfy.”

“Excellent. Pack your things, lad, and make your goodbyes. We leave in an hour.” Warden Duncan started to lead a gaping Valendrian away, then turned to smile at an equally gaping Kier. “Oh, and perhaps change into something more suitable for the road?  We’re going into battle, not a ballroom.”

And as easy as that, Kier’s life was irrevocably changed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Hamina, ‘ma vhen’an_ = Relax, my love.  
>  _Fenedhis_ = fuck, lit. ‘wolf penis’


	2. Ostagar

Traveling south with Warden Duncan, Kier quickly came to realize that he would have made a shit Dalish. Whatever wildness and love of nature was supposed to be bred into elves, it had obviously skipped a generation with Kier. He missed Denerim. Out in the wilds—and yes, he knew the Bannorn wasn’t exactly wild, but still—everything was too quiet during the day and too loud at night. And they were the wrong kind of night noises: crickets and bats, screeching owls and fox screams. The air smelled funny, and Kier spent his first night itching because he’d put his bedroll down on an ant hill.

And he missed his family. He’d been so numb in the hour he’d had to pack that he hadn’t even brought a keepsake to remember them by, only the blue hair ribbon that he’d absently stuffed into his pack. He tied it to his dagger harness and worried the ends between thumb and finger as their route took them away from everything Kier had known and cared for.

“When I joined the Wardens, it was the first time I’d ever spent time outside a city,” Warden Duncan said the afternoon of the second day. Kier nearly jumped as he had at the fox screams. They’d been traveling mostly in silence aside from the occasional ‘we’ll rest here,’ and ‘let’s move out.’

Kier grunted and kept his eyes on his toes. Warden Duncan hadn’t been treating him like a servant or a criminal, which left Kier a little unsure how he was to proceed.

“Took me forever to figure out what I was supposed to do for wiping. I was too proud to ask anyone.”

That startled a laugh from Kier, which startled a flock of starlings from the field next to them, which startled a smile from Warden Duncan. Kier’s laugh softened to a snort. “So… what _do_ you do?”

“Leaves. But not those.” He pointed at a bush with red-tinged leaves. “Unless you want a rash from balls to back.”

Kier nodded, and they walked in silence once more. That evening when they set up camp, Warden Duncan did everything a bit more slowly, more methodically, so that Kier could watch and learn.

With the long days of walking and nights spent trading watch, Kier should have slept like the dead. Instead, sleep eluded him. It was the strange noises and smells, he told himself. The lack of home comforts—and who ever would have thought that Kier would miss his hard, hay-stuffed bed?

But those were lies. When Kier woke the commander up for his watch and sought his own bedroll, the thoughts that kept him staring at the stars were not missed comforts. No, he felt Braden’s hands squeezing his ass, Kendells’ thumb in his mouth, Jonaley waving his friends to continue as though Kier was nothing. And he was nothing, at least in their eyes. Nothing in the eyes of the city guard, who would have executed him for defending himself. Nothing but another recruit to throw at the darkspawn marching on Ostagar. And then he was running, tripping over his skirts, unable to breath in his tight bodice, and a mob of faceless wardens all dressed in noble’s garb, throwing him to the carpet, tossing up his skirts and slapping his ass and—

He woke breathing too hard. Shoved his fist into his mouth so he wouldn’t alert Warden Duncan with a scream. Reached for the dagger harness next to his head and stroked the satin softness of his ribbon until his trembling quieted.

And that was the cycle of Kier’s nights. He would stare at the warden sitting watch on the other side of the fire and tell himself he could sleep. He could feel safe. But he couldn’t. He didn’t. And then he would stare up at the stars again, lying to himself that it was thoughts of home that kept him awake, until he nodded off and the nightmares came to remind him of the truth.

After they turned south at Lothering, they started running into more traffic on the Imperial Highway: refugees fleeing north, Banns and their troops going south. Everyone met Warden Duncan with respectful nods. They ignored Kier like they would a servant.

The first night, Warden Duncan had them camp with a troop of Bann Loren’s soldiers. Kier thought perhaps that having a tent, a well-guarded camp around him, and the promise of an uninterrupted night might break his insomnia. But every time one of the Bann’s soldiers passed the tent, every time Warden Duncan stirred in his sleep, Kier grew a little more tense, a little more on edge. He finally nodded off, only to be woken by something shaking him. He lashed out blindly. Warden Duncan caught his wrist, then his other one, and held him still until the panic had receded and Kier had himself under control.

And then he released Kier and went back to his own bedroll, as though suppressing blind violence after someone’s nightmare was nothing remarkable at all.

They parted with the Bann’s troops the next morning. Two men made better time than a whole troop. Though they met with other patrols, Warden Duncan kept them moving, and they never camped with a larger group again.

Their last evening on the road, Warden Duncan stayed by the fire after dinner cleanup instead of seeking his bedroll like he usually did.

“Did you want first watch, Commander?” Kier asked when no amount of fidgeting and confused glances elicited an explanation.

“Duncan. Not many wardens care for titles, and most of us decidedly _don’t_ care for them.”

Kier shifted on the log he’d dragged up to the fire, poked at the settling embers with a stick. “Oh. Right. Uh… Duncan.” He watched the dance of orange sparks rising, the little grey filaments of ash edged with cherry red. Wondered if he should ask again, but it wasn’t like the… Duncan hadn’t heard his question.

“Your thievery. You did it to help the people in the alienage?”

“Who said I ever—” One look from Duncan, and Kier knew it was pointless to even try denying it. “Yes. Merchants who cheated us, landlords who extorted us. Guards who thought we should pay for the privilege of not being beaten or robbed. My father’s a decent enough cobbler that we were able to scrape by, but others…” Kier twisted his hands around his stick, watching Duncan for a reaction. “You could have said something back in Denerim if this was a problem.”

Duncan waved away Kier’s concern. “It is no matter to me. I was a thief and worse when I was recruited.”

Kier snorted. “You?”

“In Val Royeaux. Is it so hard to believe?”

Yes. Except… Kier studied Duncan, trying to look past the armor and aura of command, the rounded ears and bulky human frame. He supposed there was grace there. Quickness. Sharp black eyes that always assessed, and the quiet air of someone looking for the right moment to act. “No, I suppose it isn’t.”

“It was necessity for me, though. My parents had died, and I heard there was money to be had in Val Royeaux.”

“I bet there is. Just not for people like us.” _Us_. Kier frowned at the unconscious phrasing. Odd to think that Duncan had grown up much like him, a kid plying the narrow alleyways of his city, eye open for opportunity.

“Yes. And Val Royeaux is more organized than Denerim. If you don’t belong to one of the gangs, getting caught or killed by the guard will be the least of your worries.”

A log on the fire shifted, and Kier prodded it so that it wouldn’t smother the flames. “So you were in a gang?”

“No.”

Kier stilled. Glanced at Duncan, who was frowning at the embers like a man sifting through unpleasant memories. No. Kier didn’t want to know where this was going, didn’t want to have anything in common with Duncan if that meant—

“I only ever got caught once. By the _Milieu Pitre_. They ran a slave ring for Tevinters.”

The quiet pause demanded some kind of response. “Well, you clearly didn’t get shipped to Tevinter.”

“I didn’t say they sent the slaves to Tevinter.”

Kier left off poking the fire, hugged his knees to his chest, and waited for Duncan to finish. Why did he want to talk now? Kier had been quite happy with their lack of conversation.

“They sold my first night to an old merchant who was visiting the city.” Duncan hand drifted to the harness he’d set aside for the night, and the matched dagger and sword in their sheaths. “I didn’t give him the chance to collect. But it took a while before I could sleep again when anyone was near. I don’t believe I slept soundly until…” He drifted into silence. Smiled ruefully. “Until long after I’d joined the Wardens.”

Realizing he was gaping, Kier tore his gaze from Duncan’s and stared determinedly into the fire. And so what if the smoke made his eyes water and his throat tighten. His thumb stroked the ribbon at his waist, seeking comfort in its softness.

After a long silence, Kier regained some ability to speak. “They didn’t… I killed them before they did anything. It’s ridiculous to be so… affected.”

Duncan grunted and stood, and for the first time, Kier was able to sit straight instead of shying away. “They did do something. You have every right to be affected. But know that you are safe with me. And from me.”

Duncan crawled into his bedroll, leaving his sword harness neatly wrapped by the fire and a confused Kier on watch with only his thoughts.

***

It would have been nice if Duncan’s story and his promise had been enough to settle Kier’s mind. It didn’t entirely. Kier woke the next morning to the fuzzy remnants of an unsettling dream where he was being held down and couldn’t move or scream. But he’d slept his half of the night through, and once he’d shaken off the hagging, he felt more refreshed, more himself, than he had since leaving Denerim. The tightness in his shoulders eased, and when they crested the approach to Ostagar, he was properly awed.

He trailed Duncan along the approach, gaping up, and up some more. Even crumbling, the stone walls seemed solid and impenetrable. Even laced with creeping vines and ragged, abandoned bird nests, the arches and towers stood proud, as though time and decay were petty concerns beneath their notice.

Kier gaped so much that he didn’t notice the honor guard come to greed them, led by a golden man in golden armor.

He knew King Cailan by sight, of course. He’d worked more than a few crowds come out to watch the Royal processions. People were less likely to notice a lightened purse when they were straining to gape at passing royalty. But Kier had never heard the King speak, never wondered what he might sound like.

Never realized what a complete idiot the man was.

Even Duncan seemed reserved in his responses to the King’s enthusiasm. King Cailan went on about glorious battles and heroics and… did the man not realize that soldiers were going to die on that field? Wardens, too? That if they failed, the Blight would sweep north where people who weren’t soldiers would die?

No. He was a shem noble. It was entirely possible he didn’t know. And entirely likely that he didn’t care.

Kier managed to keep his tongue and his thoughts to himself until the King asked where he was from and proceeded to speak fondly of Denerim as though the city King Cailan knew and the city Kier knew had anything in common.

But he snapped when the King asked how he’d come to be recruited by Duncan.

“I killed the Arl of Denerim’s son while he was trying to rape me.”

“That sounds—wh-what?!”

Duncan smoothed things over and whisked Kier away before King Cailan gathered enough of his wits to call for Kier’s execution.

“You had to choose just then break your silence,” he said, leading them through a city of tents, each encampment clustered around a larger pavilion in the house colors of a dozen or more Banns. Duncan gave Kier a perturbed look, which might have been more effective if Kier didn’t have the sense that Duncan was fighting laugher.

Woodsmoke tickled Kier’s nose, and the stink of kennels and stables and latrine pits and bodies packed close together. It smelled more like home than anywhere along the road, and strangely, like safety. “It’s not the breaking that annoys you. It’s how I broke it.”

“Yes.” Another disgruntled look with just a touch of amusement. “Try to contain yourself in the future. You’re not an anonymous elf from the alienage anymore. You’re a Grey Warden recruit. What you say and do reflects on the order.”

As though he’d timed his reprimand, Duncan stopped in front of an encampment marked with black banners sporting the silver griffon of the Grey Wardens. This cluster had no pavilion, just a crackling bonfire in the center. Only a few wardens seemed to be present. Kier suspected the rest were out scouting for the rumored darkspawn horde.

“Speaking of which, I have warden business to attend to. The recruit tent is just there.” Duncan waved at one of the tents furthest from the bonfire. “Find a warden named Alistair. He’s responsible for the new recruits. He’ll get you situated and ready for the Joining.”

Kier froze and fought the ridiculous urge to grab onto Duncan’s arm and follow him wherever he went. As though he sensed Kier’s panic, Duncan set a hand on his shoulder. “Alistair will take care of you. He’s a good man.”

So much remained unspoken in that soft, certain promise. Kier’s hand drifted to the hilt of Vaughan Kendells’ dagger, now sheathed at his waist for a back-draw. He forced himself to relax. To behave as though he had nothing to fear. “Then maybe he’ll be a good influence on me.” A sly grin lifted the corner of Kier’s mouth, only a little bit forced. “Or maybe I’ll be a bad influence on him.”

“Maker help me.” Duncan cast his gaze to the sky and strode away, muttering, “And maybe I’ll regret ever introducing the two of you.”

***

Kier was in no hurry to meet his new wrangler. He wanted to map the layout of the camp, get a feel for its dangers, before anyone tried to ‘situate’ him. He wandered past cluster after cluster of soldiers’ tents crowded around their Bann’s pavilion. More than once, he was flagged down with a ‘hey, rabbit!’ and instructed to deliver a message. He did it only because it gave him a chance to read the messages and listen in on the arguments they incited in their recipients. That stopped when he was directed to take a message to Teyrn Loghain’s pavilion.

The Teyrn was a large man, made even larger by his plate mail, and intimidating for more than just his size. This man had the sort of puissance that shems like Vaughan Kendells imagined in themselves when they pushed elves around. The Teyrn read the message with a scowl, and then looked up with an even deeper scowl. “Did you read this?”

Kier was never so glad that he was able to answer a question honestly. “I wrote it, my Lord. Bann Loren dictated it for me to take down.” It hadn’t seemed to Kier to contain anything confidential. Just more concerns about Orlesians and promises to support the Teyrn in whatever needed to be done to keep away ‘those thieving raccoons.’

“Hm.” The Teyrn crumpled the note and fed it to the brazier beside his tent. He took a step toward Kier, plate armor hard and clanking. There was no way Kier could cut through that if he needed to, not even with Vaughan Kendells’ dagger.

Kier held his ground. Held the Teyrn’s gaze. He was a Grey Warden recruit, Duncan had said. What he did reflected on the order. He couldn’t run away.

“You’re not one of the usual messengers.”

“No. I’m with the Grey Wardens. But that doesn’t seem to stop your Banns from demanding I run messages for them and threatening reprisals if I don’t.”

Another hard, searching look, and then the Teyrn turned on his heel and yanked back the flap on his pavilion. “Instruct the Banns not to mistake a warden for a messenger again,” he said to the guard posted at the entrance. “Or they will be explaining their mistake to me.”

“Yes,  my Lord.” The guard saluted the Teyrn’s back. He made sure Kier was shown to the edge of the Teyrn’s encampment before hurrying off.

So much for learning anything else about the army’s strategy. Kier wandered a bit longer, poked through the goods the Quartermaster had, dangled over a fence to play tug-of-war with a knotted rope and a sick mabari, and chatted with the houndsmaster about possible cures. But the afternoon was edging toward evening. Mellow golden light striped the camp between long shadows. Time to stop avoiding his fate. Time to find this Alistair.

A trail of questions led Kier to the edge of the Circle of Magi’s encampment, where a young man with the Wardens’ crest on his shield was patiently letting himself be harangued by a red-faced mage.

“… and another thing. If you think you can—”

“Wait. I’m sorry. That’s the fifth ‘another thing’ you’ve mentioned. Do you think you could tell me now how many there will be? Just to help me keep track, you understand.” He tapped his head. “Former Templar. We get hit in the head a lot.”

Kier coughed to keep from laughing. So, maybe not so patient.

“I… are you…” The mage gathered his robes and dignity around himself. “I am merely saying that I do not appreciate being harassed in this manner, and if the Grand Cleric wishes to deliver a message—”

“She should do so herself? Wait, no. That can’t be what you were going to say. Telling the Grand Cleric to deliver her own messages…” He shook his head.

“That is absolutely not what I meant. How can you—”

“So it _is_ acceptable for the Grand Cleric to send her messages through a messenger?”

“Clearly. That isn’t the… oh, for the Maker’s sake, give me that.” The mage snatched the message scroll from the young man and stalked off muttering.

“You know,” the young man mused, watching the mage depart, “one nice thing about the Blight is how it brings people together.”

Kier chuckled and leaned against a broken stone archway. “Like bugs to a campfire.”

The young man gave him a startled look, then grinned. “Yes. And I wouldn’t mind if that fellow there happened to singe his… hey! Hold on. You’re the new recruit who was supposed to find me hours ago.” An accusing finger was leveled at Kier. “It’s your fault I was pressed into service to deliver that message.”

Kier saluted as he’d seen the Teyrn’s guard do earlier. “Kier Tabris, reporting for duty-shirking.”

“Hmm. Warden Alistair, not certain he’s ready to forgive you.” He crossed his arms and managed to look disapproving and harmless at the same time. Kier had to admire his knack for it. Not many shems that tall and broad-shouldered could pull off harmless. “And just what have you been up to while I was being shamelessly used to irritate mages?”

 _Alistair will take care of you. He’s a good man._ Kier could admit, if only to himself, that his dawdling was because he hadn’t quite taken Duncan at his word. But this Alistair, who responded to a mage’s anger with gentle mockery and a recruit’s tardiness with feigned affront… perhaps Duncan had been right.

Kier pushed away from the arch. “Delivering messages, of course.”

Alistair snorted and led the way to the Wardens’ camp. “I bet _you_ didn’t get yelled at by any mages.”

“Me? What do you take me for?” Kier straightened, lifting his chin and puffing out his chest, and still he only came to Alistair’s shoulder. “I got yelled at by Teyrn Loghain himself.”

“You… w-what?”

At Alistair’s sputtered response, Kier laughed. Perhaps this warden thing wouldn’t be so bad after all.

***

“You want us to _what_ now?” Kier blurted.

Duncan had returned after several days’ absence and immediately ordered Alastair to gather the recruits. Kier stood with them now in a semicircle before Duncan and Alistair. And then Duncan had told them the first step of this Joining ritual, and they’d all gaped at him with varying levels of horror. Kier had been the first to find his voice. He still couldn’t believe he’d heard correctly.

“Alistair will be taking you into the Kocari Wilds. You’ll each gather a sample of darkspawn blood and return here for the Joining ritual.”

“And get the treaties,” said Alistair, more cheerful than any man had a right to be when he’d been ordered to guide six more-or-less innocent people to their doom.

Duncan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yes, if you can. The battle will be joined any day now, so don’t dawdle over it.”

“I don’t dawdle!” Alistair clapped an offended hand to his chest. “I stroll. Occasionally, I amble. Or is that ramble…”

“It’s both,” Kier muttered darkly, which only elicited another cheerful smile from Alistair.

“What exactly do you intend for us to do with these samples?” That came from Ser Jory, a knight from Highever who seemed decent enough, except the way he kept going on about the wife he’d left behind made Kier feel guilty about Nesiara. She’d come to Denerim from Highever, and he’d left her alone.

Kier glanced at the other recruits. They’d spent the last few days trailing whatever warden had some time to spare, sparring, and learning everything they never wanted to know about darkspawn. Daveth was the only one Kier had exchanged more than a few words with. Turned out they used the same fence in Denerim. The dwarf, Natia Brosca, kept muttering to herself and glaring up at the sky. Kier wondered if she’d even heard Duncan’s instructions. Solona Amell had the look of a girl who wished for ink and parchment so she could take notes, but Kier supposed all mages were funny like that.

And then there was Theron, who’d arrived with Duncan just that morning. Another elf, but this one was Dalish. _Really_ Dalish. He’d started out friendly enough, nodding at Kier’s tattoo and saying something in Elvhen too fast and complex for Kier to follow. Then he learned Kier’s name, which apparently wasn’t elvish enough to suit Theron. Kier demonstrated his grasp of Elvhen by telling Theron where he could stick his opinions, and they’d avoided each other since.

Still, Theron, Solona, Natia, and even Daveth were looking at Jory like he’d walked into the back end of a horse. It didn’t take a chantry scholar to guess that the blood was part of the ritual. Kier just hoped that any application of it would be topical like a health poultice, rather than ingested.

“That will be revealed when you return,” Duncan said, and left them to Alistair’s cheerful guidance.

Dew still beaded the long grasses and mist lurked in the hollow places when Alistair led them past the guard post and down into the dells and marshes of the Wilds. Daveth, who’d lived on the edge of the Wilds before he went to Denerim, took the lead with Alistair.

Kier found himself walking alongside Solona, whose long robes caught and snagged on every branch and bramble they passed. It was painful to watch.

“Here, unbuckle your belt.”

She raised a skeptical brow, but complied. Kier showed her how to kilt up her skirts like the laundry women did when they went a-wading.

Solona’s wariness relaxed into a smile. “Oh. That’s much more convenient. My thanks.”

“Well, you know. Anything to ogle a pretty girl’s legs.”

She chuckled and gave him a look that said she didn’t buy his nonsense for a moment. “This is the first time I’ve left the Circle. I hope it doesn’t offend you if I say that I’ve realized over the past moon that I don’t much like the wilderness.”

Kier snorted. His second day at Ostagar, he’d slipped out into the Wilds briefly to fetch some herbs for the houndsmaster. The midge-rash he returned with had been enough to affirm to himself that he was a city boy to his core.

 “Why would that offend me?” He knew, of course. Humans, even the nice ones, always assumed certain things about elves. “First time I left Denerim was a few weeks ago, and if I’ve learned one thing on this trek south, it’s that _I_ don’t like the wilderness, either.”

Ahead of them, Theron muttered a word in Elvhen that Kier _did_ understand. A very not-nice word.

“ _Ematha’paladehl_ ,” Kier replied cheerfully to the eavesdropping elf’s back. It stiffened in response. Unslinging his bow, Theron veered wide of the group to scout.

“What was that about?” Solona asked.

“Elf stuff. So, how did you get pulled into this?”

Solona tossed an electric spark from finger to finger the way someone else might fidget with her fingernails. Kier watched, fascinated, that something so rarely seen by most people was, for her, nothing more than a nervous habit. “Oh, you know. I helped a friend try to steal his phylactery and escape the Circle Tower. Turned out he was a blood mage. Oops.” She grimaced and let the spark fizzle. “You?”

“Painted the Queen’s carriage horses blue and gold and shaved the Lion of Orlais into their rumps.” The lie slipped out without thought, but Kier didn’t regret it. He’d rather Solona choke on giggles than disgust.

Apparently, Theron hadn’t been the only one eavesdropping. Alistair laughed. Jory sputtered indignantly, and Daveth gaped at Kier in awe.

Natia tore her gaze from the sky to look at Kier. “You know, kid. You’re all right.”

***

Unfortunately, that was the last pleasant moment of their slog through the Wilds. Alistair’s quiet warning, followed by the twang and sing of an arrow unleashed, heralded the arrival of darkspawn.

Kier had one moment of hesitation where he wondered if he should stay with Solona to protect her, but then heat lightning shot from her staff and chained between the darkspawn vanguard. Nope. Girl was more than able to take care of herself. Kier charged after Alistair and Jory into the thick of the fray.

The darkspawn were… Kier’s mind couldn’t quite wrap his mind around their awfulness. He’d seen his share of corpses, river bloated or half-rotted in back alleyways. He knew the smell that settled thick and sweet in the back of your mouth. He’d seen those corpses take on a semblance of life from vermin moving under the skin or limbs shifting in the currents.

This was that, and yet not. These corpselike creatures did move. Were alive. They squelched and oozed like bags filled with offal whenever Kier’s daggers cut into them. Their stench was thicker than death. It coated Kier’s tongue like tar. Only the fact that the others weren’t puking let Kier keep his bile down. He was _not_ going to be known as the recruit who lost his breakfast.

The darkspawn mostly ignored the recruits. They converged on Alistair, but the warden was more than able to hold his own. He kept the darkspawn close, throwing off blows with shield and sword  and doing his best to hold their attention.

 _Alistair will take care of you_. And Kier owed it to Duncan to take care of Alistair, no matter how stomach-turning these things were. He took advantage of the bared backs, slipped into the spaces between Alistair’s strikes, cutting tendons and muscle when he realized that gut wounds did little to deter the darkspawn. Heel cord, hamstring, the occasional severed spine when he could manage the strike. One of the bigger hurlocks toppled over onto him, and Kier kicked and struggled frantically to _get it off_.

The hurlock rolled away and Kier came up swinging, only to have his offhand blade skitter harmlessly off Alistair’s shield.

“Hey. Hey, it’s alright. They’re all down.” Hesitantly, Alistair laid a hand on Kier’s arm, steadying him.

“Maker, but you’re a terror with those things,” Daveth said nodding at Kier’s knives. He wiped his own daggers clean on a patch of grass not covered in black ichor. “I think you took down twice as many as the rest of us.”

“I did?” Kier glanced around. He hadn’t really been paying enough attention to count. He’d just moved into the openings Alistair created and sliced whatever came into reach. He examined his blades. “Can you point out which ones so I can collect my sample?”

“Wait, we’re supposed to collect them from our own kills?” Solona stamped her foot, which looked all the more ridiculous with her robes kilted up and spattered with gore. “Well, what am I supposed to do? I fried all of mine.”

After that first fight, it seemed like there was a constant stream of things that wanted to die on their blades—and Solona’s bolts. Wolves, demons, and darkspawn, darkspawn, darkspawn.

“I have a new respect for the Chasind for choosing to live in such a place,” Theron said to Kier after they’d killed their third wolf pack. Something about fighting for their lives together bridged the animosity between the City and the Dales.

“You’re not from here?” Kier asked, watching with awe at how quickly and cleanly Theron skinned the corpses.

Theron gave him the same look that Kier gave humans who assumed he liked the wilderness. “Brecilian Forest,” he said, cleaning and sheathing his skinning knife and retrieving his bow.

“Oh,” said Kier. And then, because he couldn’t resist, “Where’s that?”

The darkspawn were waiting in ambush when they reached the old outpost where the treaties were supposed to be, which they discovered when one of the oversized hurlocks grabbed Theron and hurled him into a tree.

“I thought you could sense darkspawn,” Kier muttered to Alistair as they finished off the last of the ambushers.

“When you can pick out the scent of your own shit in a shit house, you let me know and _you_ can be in charge,” Alistair snapped and strode off to check on the others.

They left Solona to heal Theron and Natia standing guard while the rest of them—Alistair, Jory, Daveth, and Kier—ventured into the ruin.

It was more recently built than Ostagar, but much further sunk into decay. One part of the ruin remained mostly intact—a set of wide stairs leading up to something that might once have been a gallery. The rest of the ruin was hardly recognizable as a structure. Columns had toppled under the weight of their stone lintel slabs. Many of those slabs had cracked on impact. Grasses and weeds grew tall around them, all but obscuring them. They rested at odd angles, creating sheltered spaces that no doubt made cozy homes for the local wildlife.

Or a perfect hiding place for an abandoned coffer.

“Sorry,” Kier said softly to Alistair when Jory and Daveth were occupied with crawling under a fallen slab to check underneath it.

Alistair stiffened. “No. You were right. I should have been paying closer attention. Theron got hurt because of me.”

That Alistair had been angry at the teasing, Kier had known. That he was angrier with himself because an elf under his command had been hurt… “Theron got hurt because he’s going to be a Grey Warden, and apparently this fighting darkspawn business is dangerous.”

“Thanks,” Alistair said softly. Ruffling sweat-damp hair, he gave Kier a sheepish grimace. “I’m pretty sure a leader isn’t supposed to admit things like this, but I don’t like being in charge.”

“I won’t tell if you won’t.” Kier winked. “Blackmail material for later.”

“Yes, because that’s the quick path to riches. Blackmailing _me_.” Alistair kicked the cockeyed bluestone slab nearest them. “Make yourself useful and check under this rock, recruit.”

“Yessir!”

They’d poked through most of the ruin and were verging on sweaty, dirty, and discouraged, when Kier spotted a gleam of metal catching the afternoon light.

“Over here!” he called, and after much grunting and heaving and a few smooshed fingers, they unearthed a half-buried chest with the seal of the Grey Wardens on it. Before Kier could have a go at the lock, Alistair sheared it off with the base point of his shield and flipped open the chest.

“Well, shit,” Kier said, staring down into a chest empty of anything but mouse turds.

Daveth snickered. “You said it.”

Jory huffed, which was becoming a common response whenever the rest of them made any kind of joke. “Perhaps this isn’t the correct chest,” he said to Alistair.

Alistair knelt, brushing his gauntleted fingers over the seal. “No. I can feel the residual magic. It’s the right one, but the seal has been broken. We’ll just have to tell Duncan they’re not here any—”

“Hssh!” Kier hissed, backing into the long shadows behind a half-toppled column when he caught movement from the gallery above.

Daveth reacted as any sensible Denerim resident might, finding his own shadows to hide in. Alistair and Jory just stood where they were, in the golden afternoon light, in their stupid shiny armor, with confused looks on their faces. That confusion deepened when a woman stepped from the gallery and sauntered down the wide stairway like she was Queen of the ruin.

Spoke like it too. “And what have we here? Is it thieves, I wonder. Scavengers? Vermin?” She stopped before Alistair, just out of lunging reach.

“It’s a witch of the wilds!” Daveth’s whisper was close enough to tickle Kier’s ear and make him jump. The man must have slipped around to Kier’s position while they were distracted by the woman. “We have to get out of here before she turns us into toads.”

Apparently, witches of the wilds didn’t feel the cold the way normal people did. The woman’s dark clothing draped loosely around her, revealing more pale skin than it hid. She was lean, all bone and tight muscle. Feathers and shiny black thorns and bits of white bone bristled from her hair and the head of her staff. Her face was as hard cut and sharp-edged as the rest of her, and she glanced past Alistair and Jory, into the shadows where Kier hid, with amber hawk’s eyes.

Kier brushed off Daveth’s tugging. He wasn’t craven enough to abandon allies, even human ones. Sauntering forward as though he was King to her Queen, he said, “I don’t know about these shems, but I take exception to being called vermin.”

She arched a brow. “But thief is acceptable to you?”

Kier lifted one shoulder. “Why would I take exception to the truth?”

The woman laughed, which did nothing to soften her sharpness. “Oh, I like you. It is so rare to meet a man who is honest.”

Kier shouldn’t be having this much fun bantering with a potential threat, but… “Rare to meet a woman who’s looking for honesty.”

When the woman laughed again, Alistair leaned close to whisper, “Careful. She looks Chasind, and that means there could be more—“

Not low enough to keep the woman from hearing. “Oooh. You fear barbarians may swoop down upon you?”

Caught, Alistair straightened. “Yes.  Swooping is bad.”

Kier rubbed his ear to banish the tingles caused by Alistair’s whisper and glared at his commander for antagonizing the woman. “I’m Kier, by the way,” he said to her, hoping to salvage things. “And since we both value honesty, I suspect you know what we are looking for.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed—speculation rather than animosity. “Indeed I do, though it is no longer here.” A pause. Another sharp smile. “And you may call me Morrigan.”

Alistair seemed to remember that he was supposed to be leading their expedition. “What do you mean, no longer here? Did you take those treaties? Doesn’t that make you the thief?”

“How can one steal from dead men?” Morrigan toyed with a gleaming periwinkle dangling from her staff, then sighed as though taunting them had ceased to amuse her. “My mother retrieved the treaties that your men abandoned. You should be thanking us.”

“Thanking you?!” The scales of Alistair’s armor grated against each other when he crossed his arms—Kier suspected to keep from strangling Morrigan. “You—” He grunted when Kier’s elbow gouged into the side-seam of his brigandine.

“Would it be possible to meet your mother?” Kier cocked his head and grinned his winsome best. “Since you like me so much?”

That got another laugh from Morrigan. “If I truly liked you, I would say no and direct you as far from this place as possible. But since you have asked so nicely…” Sweeping her staff in an invitation to follow, she led the way out of the ruins, musing, “It will be entertaining to watch you try to cozen _her_.”

***

They collected the others, but between Theron’s grogginess and the way Solona and Morrigan spat thinly-veiled insults at each other, Kier suggested it might be best if they waited in a nearby copse of trees with Natia standing guard.

The peat-roofed hut blended so well with the vegetation that it looked like just another hillock until the side opened up. The woman who emerged to greet them was… odd. Kier could think of no better word for her. She was as wrinkled and world-worn as a Denerim beggar, with the sort of dark shading to her skin that came from years of ingrained dirt. And yet she smelled of crushed herbs and green things instead of filth, and she carried herself as straight and proud as her daughter.

And seemed just as sharply amused to meet them.

“It is rare that we receive such illustrious visitors,” she said after Morrigan made the introductions. The emphasis she purred into the word ‘illustrious’ turned it from compliment to insult.

To Kier’s increasing frustration, Alistair rose to the bait. “Yes, I’m certain that aside from the odd Templar, you and your _lovely_ daughter must not get a lot of company.”

The old woman cackled too long and too loud. Morrigan managed to look both amused and embarrassed by her reaction. That more than anything convinced Kier that this ancient crone could be Morrigan’s mother.

The woman wiped tears from her eyes. “Oh, the Templars never make it this far, I assure you.”

Kier wondered if they made it back to where they’d come from, or if the beasts of the Wilds occasionally feasted on dead Templar. Alistair drew breath, and Kier worried he was about to voice a similar thought aloud.

“So, these treaties,” Kier said before Alistair could make things harder for them. Hadn’t anyone ever taught him to turn the sarcasm off?

Sharp, golden hawk eyes fixed on Kier. The mother this time rather than the daughter. She studied him long enough to make him fidget. “Yes. Of course. I suspect you will have great need of them soon,” she finally said, and disappeared into the hut.

Kier took the opportunity to poke Alistair.

“Ow!”

“Try not to offend the nice apostates who have what we want.” Kier kept his voice low, smiling at Morrigan. He suspected that she had no problem hearing his whisper, but this was as much theater for her as it was warning for Alistair.

“Listen to the elf,” Daveth said. He’d only grown more twitchy the longer they remained in Morrigan’s presence. “Do you want to get thrown into the pot?”

“If the pot is warmer than these Wilds,” Ser Jory grumbled.

The old woman emerged with a satchel of oiled leather. “They’re intact. The seal protecting them wore off ages ago, so I took over the duty.”

“You… oh.” Alistair took the satchel. “Er…thank you.”

“And now, it grows late and you should leave. I’d offer to let you stay for supper,” she bared her teeth at Daveth in nothing like a grin, “but I don’t believe you’d like what’s in my pot.”

Daveth squeaked and tried to hide behind Ser Jory.

“Yes, fare well.” Morrigan waved at them with a friendliness as bright as it was false. “Do be careful of Chasind and apostates and darkspawn swooping down on you.”

The old woman watched her daughter’s display, and then she smiled, the slow smile of a cat with a mouse. Or, no. The cold smile of a snake watching all the world. “Don’t be foolish, my girl. These are your guests. Surely you should show them on their way.”

“I… what?” Golden gaze locked with golden gaze. After only a moment of silent struggle, Morrigan’s shoulders slumped. “Yes, mother. Come along, you. I should like to be back before she eats _all_ our supper.”

She strode off without waiting to see if she was followed. She needn’t have worried. Kier and the others were right at her back.

***

The sun had set and the camp was in an uproar by the time they returned.

“Scouts spotted the horde less than a day’s travel south. They’ll be here by midday, but they’ll wait to attack until night falls,” one of the senior wardens told Alistair when they returned to warden enclave. The camp around them was nearly deserted, just a few wardens packing gear and dumping sand on the bonfire embers to douse them.

The senior warden shoved gear into a pack, checked the buckles on her armor and sword harness. “We’re down in the valley near the front. Duncan’s waiting for you lot in the old temple.” She gave Kier and the other recruits an enigmatic glance, then clapped a hand on Alistair’s shoulder. “Don’t dally. We need all swords on the field.”

Alistair frowned, looking almost… sad. But then he shook himself, and the look was gone so fast that Kier doubted what he’d seen.

“We shall join you soon,” Alistair said.

It was an oddly formal phrasing, but the senior warden didn’t seem to take it amiss. With a nod at the recruits and a soft,” you shall,” she gathered her gear and led the few remaining wardens out the gate.

Duncan was indeed waiting for them in a transept oddly empty despite the camp’s battle preparations. He stood before a camp table with a silver chalice sitting atop it.

Kier eyed the chalice and sighed. Taking out his vial of darkspawn blood, he shoved it at Duncan. “I hate it when I’m right.”

Solona, Natia, and Daveth seemed to have come to the same conclusion. They handed over their vials, grim but compliant. Theron—well, who could get a read on Theron, really? He hesitated a moment, then his jaw firmed and he placed the vial in Duncan’s outstretched hand.

Only Ser Jory seemed to have not caught on. His brow furrowed when Duncan plucked his sample out of his loose grip. “Wait, what’s going on.” He glanced around at the rest of them, but found no comrades in confusion.

Duncan’s response had the cadence and weight of ritual. “At last we come to the Joining. The Grey Wardens were founded during the First Blight, when humanity stood on the verge of annihilation.” He poured the contents of the six vials into the chalice, then pulled out a seventh vial, the sort that mages kept lyrium potions in. It seemed to drip shadow, though when Kier blinked hard, the shadows cleared and it was simply a normal glass vial filled with pure evil.

Duncan poured that into the silver chalice as well. “So it was that the first Grey Wardens drank of darkspawn blood and mastered their taint.”

Ser Jory still hadn’t wrapped his mind around the significance of the chalice or what the Joining entailed. “We’re going to drink the blood of those… those creatures?” Perhaps knightly training in Highever included lots of blows to the head.

Duncan lifted the chalice, swirling it to mix the blood. He fixed his gaze on Jory. “As the first Grey Wardens did before us. As we did before you. This is the source of our power, and our victory.”

“Those who survive the Joining become immune to the taint,” Alistair said softly, stepping close enough to Kier that their shoulders brushed. Kier flinched and edged away from the contact. “We can sense it in the darkspawn and use it to slay the Archdemon.”

“Not all who drink the blood will survive…”

Kier knew Duncan kept talking, but fear clouded his awareness, his heart beating loudly enough in his ears that he couldn’t hear anything but his own thoughts. _Those who survive. Not all survive_.

So escaping Kendells and being saved from execution by the Denerim guard was only a delay on his fate. He had no doubts he would die from this Joining. He was smaller, thinner, weaker than the others. Even Theron was robust from living in the wild, not scrounging for meals and giving them away because there were others hungrier than him. Kier didn’t resent the few extra weeks of life, but it would have been nice if Duncan had told him. He’d have written a last letter home, maybe trawled the camp for a final fuck. Or… something.

Alistair’s voice snapped him back to the moment. “Join us, Brothers and Sisters. Join us in the shadows where we stand vigilant. Join us as we carry the duty that cannot be forsworn. And should you perish, know that your sacrifice will not be forgotten, and that one day, we shall join you.”

It reminded Kier of what he’d said to Alistair about the dangers they’d chosen to face. He met Alistair’s gaze, and the warden nodded ever so slightly. So that had been the meaning of that exchange with the senior warden. All the wardens were ready to die.

And apparently, that readiness started now.

“Daveth, step forward.” Duncan held out the chalice. Kier was somewhat relieved that he wasn’t called first, a relief shared by the other recruits to judge by the sagging shoulders. He watched with sympathy and dread as Daveth wrapped shaking hands around Duncan’s steady ones and drank of the chalice.

It was a morbid feeling, waiting and watching for a man to die, hoping he didn’t and repressing the niggling and false thought that your odds would be better if he did. Daveth didn’t make them wait long. Barely had Duncan lowered the chalice than Daveth grabbed his throat, eyes rolling white. With a horrible, choked gurgle, he fell hard on his knees and sprawled to one side. Black bile sprayed from his lips, mottling the grey-green winter scrub that covered the ground. Most of the recruits flinched back, but Solona surged forward, blue healing light rising up around her hands.

Duncan waved her off. Knelt and closed Daveth’s eyes. “I am sorry, Daveth.”

Solona stumbled back to her place in their ragged line. Kier caught her hand. Squeezed. Her fingers were cold as though she’d been calling up ice.

“He… he…” she whispered.

Kier was surprised they weren’t breaking each other’s fingers, they were gripping so tightly. “I know.”

Duncan rose from his crouch and held up the chalice. “Step forward, Jory.”

Ser Jory backed up until the stone wall of the transept stopped him. He fumbled for his sword when Duncan advanced. “But I have a wife… a child. Had I known…”

Duncan tilted his head, eyes narrowing. He passed the chalice to Alistair and drew his own blades. Shorter than Jory’s, but Kier had no doubt twice as deadly in Duncan’s hands. “There is no turning back.”

 _Drink!_ Kier wanted to shout. A slight chance was better than none. And yet, if he’d been called right after watching Daveth die, might he not have been tempted to flee?

“Just drink it,” Solona whispered. From their silent nods, Natia and Theron were in agreement. Jory hadn’t particularly endeared himself to any of them, with his boasting and belief that he deserved this honor, but he was one of them. One of theirs.

Jory’s eyes flicked to Duncan’s daggers, back to Kier and the other recruits. The tip of his sword dipped, and for a moment Kier hoped, but then—

“No! You ask too much. There is no glory in this.”

It was quick after that. Jory didn’t even have the chance to raise his weapon before Duncan came under his guard and planted his daggers deep. Solona hid her face in Kier’s shoulder. He forced himself not to hide, to watch. This was what he was a part of now. An order that placed duty above even the lives of its own, veterans and recruits alike.

 _Daveth thought the fight was worth it_. Kier glanced down at Daveth’s body, only a few moments dead. _Was it worth it, Daveth?_

Duncan gently lowered Jory’s body to slump against the wall. He stood silent for a moment, then turned back to the four of them that remained. “But the Joining is not yet complete.” He sounded equal parts weary and ominous.

Kier released Solona’s hand and stepped forward before sense and self-preservation could catch up with him. “I’ll go next.” It wasn’t bravery. It was the furthest thing from bravery. He just didn’t want to watch Solona and the others die while he waited his turn.

Alistair held up the chalice. Duncan was speaking, but his voice sounded muffled and far off. Kier locked eyes with Alistair, laid his hands atop the other man’s to steady the chalice. They were warm, and Kier took strength from that. He lifted the chalice to his lips and drank.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Ematha’paladahl_ = lit. (Go) hug a sex tree. _Paladahl_ is slang for penis, so this is roughly equivalent to ‘eat a dick’, but with the extra implication of tree-hugging. A particularly City elf way to insult a Dalish.


	3. Ishal

The nice thing about mastering his taint—if nice was the right word—was that Kier didn’t wake to dreams of Kendells or Braden pressing down on him with their weight. Instead, he woke to the ragged, trailing edges of a dream that felt more real than the dimness of the tent around him. He could still hear the dragon’s song, a ringing in his ears that wouldn’t go away. And he felt that song. Felt all the creatures it was connected to, like an itch under his skin, a sourness in his belly as though he’d drunk curdled milk. The only thing that kept him from leaning over the side of his cot and retching was the four, steady presences he also sensed. Closer than the itching, closer than the song, they thrummed, warm and soothing as a cat’s purr. The nearest one warmest of all.

“You’re awake.” Alistair crouched beside Kier’s cot, looking entirely too hale for Kier to want to deal with. “How are you feeling?”

Kier squinted, glaring out of one eye. “Worse than that time I drank an entire bottle of Alvarado's Bathtub Boot Screech and decided it was a good idea to swim naked in Drakon Bay.”

Alistair’s grin widened. “Yes. Darkspawn blood. None of the fun of the night before, all the regrets of the morning after.” He handed Kier a cup of something steaming and minty.

Kier groaned. Sipped. “Is it morning already?” And then bolted upright, to his pounding head’s immediate regret.

But not pounding hard enough to distract him. “The others—”

“All well.” Alistair shifted so Kier could see three other cots and their occupants. Solona breathed too softly and quickly. Natia jerked and flinched in her sleep, and Theron looked a little green—but that could have been a Dalish thing. “And it’s afternoon.”

Kier sagged in relief and didn’t even have the will to pull away when Alistair rubbed his back. It was soothing, like his presence. It muffled the distant whispers. “I can feel you.”

“Hm. That might have something to do with my hand on your back.”

Kier scowled and smacked Alistair’s chest. “I mean all of you. Like… a not-noise to quiet the noise.”

Alistair’s brows rose. “Already? That’s—”

They both jumped when Natia woke with a shout, followed shortly after by cries from Solona and Theron.

Throwing off her blanket, Natia sat up and scowled at the room like she was hoping to spot something she could pummel. “What. The fuck. Was that?”

Alistair left Kier and delivered more steaming cups to the others. “Darkspawn dreams.”

Natia shoved the cup away. “Dwarves don’t dream.”

“Grey Warden dwarves do. Drink, you’ll feel better.”

Natia didn’t stop glaring at Alistair, but she took the cup.

“It wasn’t a dream,” Solona said into the bowl of her own cup. Looking up, she shrugged at the roomful of stares. “At least, I wasn’t in the Fade. And I’m best equipped to know.” She waved her fingers, twirling a few sparks around them.

Alistair settled on a camp stool. “It’s the Archdemon. We can hear it, same as we can sense darkspawn. And eventually, other wardens.”

Kier ducked his head and breathed deep of the mint-scented steam to avoid the curious look Alistair was giving him.

“Wait, so you’re telling me I finally get to find out about these dream things you top-siders go on about, but it’s all going to be death and screaming monsters?”

“That’s about right.” Alistair held up his hands when Natia mock-threatened to douse him with the contents of her cup. “It’s at its worst just after the Joining. It fades. I promise.”

“But it doesn’t go away.” Kier swirled the dregs of his own tisane. So much for ever sleeping well again.

“No,” Alistair said softly. “The price we pay. You’ll hear those words a lot.”

That left them all staring into their cups, which Kier thought was a funny sort of way to celebrate being alive.

Natia shook herself. “Well, I’da been a dead Duster elsewise. Guess these dreams of yours are a fair price.” She pounded back the tisane like it was a shot of hard liquor.

Solona laughed softly. “I’d have been made Tranquil, most likely,” she said and downed her dregs.

Theron held up his cup. “Tainted shambler.” He drank. “Don’t ask.”

They all looked at Kier. “I don’t know what they do to people who release a hive of bees into the Landsmeet, but it can’t be pleasant.” He’d already finished his dregs, but he pantomimed drinking.

“Thought it was dyed and shaved horses,” Natia drawled, tapping the rim of her cup.

Kier winked at her. “Coulda been that.”

“There are advantages,” Alistair said, dragging the conversation back in the vicinity of on-topic. “Sensing darkspawn, immunity to the taint.” When they all glared at him, he fumbled for something better. “Uh… increased stamina…”

It was hard to say who snickered first, but within moments they were all laughing hard enough to make their cots creak. And Alistair, interestingly, was flushing a pink that went very nicely with his golden hair and stubble.

“Stamina, huh?” Natia set her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands, and leered at him. “Do tell us _all_ about your stamina, Warden Alistair.”

“I… that’s… er… moving on,” he stammered. “Let’s see. Increased appetite—”

There was no talking after that, not over the laughter. Kier watched Alistair for some sign that he wasn’t as flustered as he seemed. Nobody was that naïve, were they? But could anyone feign a blush that charming?

“Oh Maker. Just. Here.” Alistair threw a pendant at each of them. “Blood. Joining. Commemoration. Just put them on and let me get through the rest of this, alright?”

When Duncan poked his head into the tent a while later, Alistair’s orientation was winding down and they were all subdued once more.

“Good, you’re all awake. Solona, Senior Enchanter Wynne seems to think you’ll be of most use with the Circle mages, so report to her on the bluff. Theron and Natia, you’re down on the field with the rest of us. Alistair, his Majesty has requested our presence at his war table. You too, Kier.”

Duncan left while they were still staring at him in shock. Then there was a mad scramble for gear and supplies, food—Alistair wasn’t kidding about the appetite thing—and goodbyes that were more teary-eyed than Kier expected. Alistair had spoken of the Wardens as a family, and now Kier understood how that could be. The last few days had forged a closeness among these strangers that he never would have expected.

He sniffed back tears as he waved them off. He was tired of having to say goodbye to family.

“Why do you think the King wants to see us?” Kier asked Alistair once they were alone and making their way down to the royal field pavilion. Dusk was fast approaching, hurried on by dark clouds that promised rain.

“I couldn’t possibly guess,” Alistair said in the tones of a man who knew very well and didn’t wish to discuss it.

Oddly, that relieved Kier. It meant that it probably didn’t have anything to do with Vaughan Kendells’ death.

They found the King’s war table easily, surrounded as it was by guttering torchlight and important-looking people. Alistair stopped at Duncan’s side on the edge of the circle. Kier stayed in their shadows, just in case.

The discussion underway was exactly as long-winded and pointlessly contentious as Kier might have expected. The King insisted that he would be on the field of battle with the Grey Wardens. Teyrn Loghain looked like he might grind his teeth to dust, biting back the urge to call out the King’s idiocy. There was some tension around Orlais that reminded Kier of the messages he’d delivered. He was distracted from wondering about it when the King turned his attention to them. Before Kier quite knew what was happening, he and Alistair had been tasked to light the beacon that would signal the Teyrn to bring his hammer down upon the anvil created by the King and his forces.

From Alistair’s reaction, he was as surprised and dismayed by this command as Kier was, so perhaps he hadn’t known beforehand why they were being called.

The council moved on to other matters, the wardens dismissed by dint of being ignored. Duncan led them away, stopping at the base of the road that led up to the empty camp.

“The battle will be starting soon,” he said, scanning the forces massed at their end of the valley. The Teyrn’s forces must have already been sent to the far side of the ruin to wait. “Gather your gear and head to the tower now. We need you in place with the Teyrn’s men to give the signal. Take the treaties you recovered, too. They shouldn’t be left in camp, but I don’t want them on the field.”

“Duncan, this is—”

“Your _King’s_ command,” Duncan said, cutting off Alistair’s protest.

“But he’s only doing this because…” At another sharp look from Duncan, Alistair slammed his closed fist against his thigh and looked away like a petulant child. “I belong down here with you.”

Kier didn’t meant for his snort to be heard. He sighed when both men turned glares on him. “You sound like him. The King.” He waved a hand back at the war table. “Can’t wait to rush into glorious battle. Fine. I’ll go myself. Better than following in the wake of a suicidal idiot.”

The flush that crept up Alistair’s cheeks this time was neither naïve nor charming. “I didn’t take you for a coward,” he said. From most men, Kier would have interpreted that as a taunt or a threat. From this one, it sounded more like disappointment.

Perhaps that was why Kier softened what he might have said. “Battle’s not glorious. Battle’s what you do to protect your own.”

“And my _own_ will be down here on this field.” Alistair thrust a finger in the direction of the Grey Warden banners.

“They’re my own now, too. And we’ve been given a duty meant to help them win, so stop whinging about it.”

“Kier, enough.” Duncan placed a hand on Alistair’s shoulder, and Alistair sagged under that touch, let his head droop.

“I’ll do it. Of course I will.” He lifted his head, lips twisted into a bitter parody of his usual smile. “My King commands it.”

“As does your commander,” Duncan said. “We don’t have any guarantee that this battle will end the Blight. I, for one, doubt it. We need all the wardens we have to maintain until the Orlesian garrison arrives.”

“Yes. I know.” Alistair covered Duncan’s hand with his own, squeezing. “Be safe.”

“I’ll do my best. Go now.”

Kier watched Alistair watch Duncan leave. “Is he your father?” Kier asked. _Or lover_ , he wanted to ask, but the quelling look Alistair gave him shut down any other questions.

“No,” Alistair said and, slinging his shield onto his back, led the way back to the staging camp.

***

The battle was already engaged by the time Alistair and Kier reached the causeway leading to the Tower of Ishal. Boulders covered in pitch and set aflame sailed overhead or crashed into the age-old supports. The soldiers manning the catapults on the causeway shouted orders, launched their own flaming tar bombs, and seemed to be doing a better job hitting the enemy. With the size of the horde flooding the valley below, it was almost impossible to miss.

Kier’s jog faltered. “That’s… a lot of darkspawn.” And now that he saw them, he realized he could feel them, like thousands of spiders creeping under his skin. Could hear their whispers, a ravenous chorus set to an eerie melody that not even Alistair’s presence could dampen.

“I thought we would have more time,” Alistair muttered. “It’s a good thing the Teyrn sent people ahead.”

His long strides sped up to a jog. Kier had to run to keep up.

The scream of ‘Incoming!’ was all the warning they got before one of the flaming boulders smashed into a nearby catapult. The crew was blown in all directions in a spray of blood and burning bodies. The catapult chains broke, sending the entire apparatus hurtling at Kier.

Alistair hit him first, tackling him out of the way of a thousand tonnes of flaming siege weapon. They landed hard, skidding across the stone causeway. Only Alistair’s hand at the back of Kier’s head kept him from cracking his skull wide open.

The impact slammed the breath out of him. His chest heaved against emptiness, against the crushing weight of the armored human on top of him. Kier shook, panic rising up until whatever broke his breath passed and he was able to suck in a deep, desperate breath.

“Get off! _Get OFF!_ ” He shoved at Alistair’s chest.

“Are you hurt? Kier?” Alistair scrabbled off him, hands hovering helplessly as he searched for a wound.

Kier sat up, hugging himself and sucking in breath after breath to fight back the trembling that had overtaken him. He squeezed inward with every muscle, trying to press the panic into a hard knot he could shove aside to deal with later. Opening his eyes, he saw Alistair hovering.

He waved away the concern. “I’m fine. Just… couldn’t breathe.” He touched his chest, winced, but he was breathing easily enough now, if too quickly. Nothing broken, then.

“That’s going to leave a bruise,” he said, looking up at Alistair with a shaky smile.

Alistair exhaled in relief. “Well, if you weren’t such a delicate flower—ow! See if I help you up.” He belied his words by hauling Kier to his feet.

Debris littered the causeway, bits of flaming wreckage and boulder, the half-smashed catapult hard against the far wall. And the crew, screaming, moaning, lying still and silent. One woman with black, bubbling skin down her side clutched an arm—and only the arm—of one of her crewmates, the flesh of their hands seared together by the heat.

Alistair rushed forward, pulling out a poultice as though that would ever be enough for such wounds.

Kier caught his arm. “We have to move.”

“But…” Alistair looked down at the woman, looked out at the armies below. They hadn’t met yet, still firing ballista bolts and arrows back and forth. But they would. Soon. And then the King’s forces would draw the darkspawn into position, and then…

Jaw firming, Alistair nodded and re-shouldered his shield. “Let’s get to that beacon.”

They made it across the rest of the causeway safely. The rain broke just as they entered the bailey, and with it rose the itching under Kier’s skin.

“Alistair,” he said.

“I feel it,” Alistair responded grimly. He dragged his shield into position as two shadowed forms raced toward them, but the guttering torchlight revealed them to be human—a soldier and a mage.

“Darkspawn!” the soldier shouted. “We can’t get into the tower.”

Kier recognized the guard from the Teyrn’s tent. He rushed ahead of Alistair. “You’re the men? The men the Teyrn sent?”

“What’s left of us.”

“What about the beacon?”

The guard waved back the way they’d come, “We can’t get to the beacon to light it!”

The mage was bent over, hands on his knees as he gulped air. “Need to get… message to…”

Kier exchanged a look with Alistair. That was all it took to come to an agreement and move.

“There’s no time,” Alistair said, jogging toward the tower. He banged his sword against his shield, making himself a loud and shining, warden-tainted target for any darkspawn in the vicinity. “Follow me.”

The guard and the mage followed. Kier slipped into the shadows of the bailey wall, ready to pick off the darkspawn when they mobbed Alistair.

And mob they did, all through the bailey and into the first level of the tower and the rubble-strewn pit the darkspawn had crawled out of.

“There’s no telling how many are in the tower,” Alistair muttered, peering into the depths of the pit. The twisted smile he shot Kier held a hint of its usual brightness. “Unless you’ve learned to smell your own shit in a shithouse.”

“You just don’t want to be in charge.” Kier shook his head, which became a full body shiver. He understood now why Alistair had been hampered in the Wilds. The darkspawn were everywhere. He could barely concentrate through the revulsion and the distracting whispers.

He frowned down at the pit. “This isn’t an accident. The darkspawn knew about the plan. The beacon. Somehow, they must have known.” Why else would they have come to the abandoned tower?

Alistair rose from his crouch, slapping his gauntleted hands against his thighs to knock off the dirt. “The one advantage we have over darkspawn is that they’re about as intelligent as your average maggot, and now you want to take that comfort away? Spoilsport.”

Kier snorted and nudged the guard and mage, who were catching their breath. “Let’s move. It’s a long way up.”

The way up was made longer by wave after wave of darkspawn.

“As intelligent as maggots, huh?” Kier said after they’d fought past a cunning trap of archers and siege ballista.

“Shut-up.” Alistair stomped toward the door to the next level, flinching as he rotated his sword arm. The mage hurried alongside and _tried_ to heal him.

“If you would just hold still a moment,” the mage grumbled after a blue glow slid off Alistair with little effect.

“There’s no time.” Alistair pushed the mage aside and reached for the door.

Kier stepped in front of him, hand pressed against his chest. “And there is no point if we die before we get to the beacon. Let him heal you. We need you to keep standing so the darkspawn can keep whacking at you.”

Alistair grimaced. “Glad to know I’m good for something,” he grumbled, but he waited long enough for the mage to heal him properly.

And a good thing, Kier thought, as they cleared the second level and made their way to the top chamber of the tower.

“What is that?” Kier asked, unable to tear his eyes off the behemoth rooting through piles of rubble. A behemoth that had turned its heavy-horned head when they entered, and was now gathering its massive, muscled body as though it meant to leap across the room at them.

“That would be an ogre.”

Kier had to admire how Alistair managed to sound cheerful even in the face of impending doom. “Oh,” he said faintly. “Gr…eat.” His fingers flexed around the hilts of his daggers. They seemed very small just then.

The time that Alistair had been so worried about became a blur of arm-jarring strikes, even more jarring blows from the ogre, and quite a bit of frantic leaping-out-of-the-way when the ogre gathered itself for another teeth-rattling charge. The urgency to light the beacon became an urgency to stay alive.

Kier had been relieved that it wasn’t wearing much in the way of armor, until one glancing cut at the ogre’s leathery hide proved that Kier’s slashes were about as effective as paper cuts. Instead of wading in up close, he crept and circled, slipped on blood—some of it his own—and waited for the mage to freeze the ogre’s movements to a glacial pace, or for Alistair and the Teyrn’s guard to create the openings he needed. Femoral, brachial, carotid, but bleeding the ogre had little more effect than slicing at it. Frustrated, he hacked away at the back of the ogre’s massive thigh, reached in, and _ripped_ out the fucking hamstring by hand.

That, at least, got the beast limping and let them concentrate on whittling it down rather than running.

It also got it angry. Kier dodged a swipe from the ogre, rolling between its legs and taking shelter behind Alistair and his shield. Frustrated, the ogre grabbed Alistair by the middle like a child’s doll, lifted him, and roared rage and spittle into his face. Kier heard something crunch, heard Alistair whimper.

No. _No_.

He rushed the ogre. His knives squelched into the meat of the ogre’s bicep, but that wasn’t enough to make him drop Alistair. Gritting his teeth, Kier carved handholds, climbing higher with each strike. At the apex, he cast aside his off-hand and sank his main blade into the ogre’s shoulder, forcing the tip between ball and socket. Planting his feet on the ogre’s bloody bicep, Kier grabbed the hilt with both hands and _pulled_.

He felt the vibration of Kendells’ blade snapping at the same moment he heard the pop of dislocation. The ogre’s arm went limp; Alistair clattered to the floor. Before Kier could leap to safety, the ogre plucked him up with his good arm and hurled him across the room.

Kier hit the wall and then the ground. The world reeled around him—flagstones and buttresses, rain beating through an open archway, and a stack of dry kindling waiting for a spark. And pain, pain, so much pain that it fuzzed out everything else. Even the whispers faded into buzzing and resolved into a song. A beautiful song, or perhaps a song about beauty, where even pain was a form of beauty.

A roaring cacophony obliterated the song. Kier lifted his head in time to see Alistair bash the ogre’s chin up with his shield and thrust his sword into the soft under jaw. Yanking on his blade like a lever, Alistair severed the head from the body.

The stones shook under Kier when the ogre collapsed. He let his head droop, closed his eyes, and swallowed against nausea.

“Kier!” Hands at his back, gently rolling him over, sitting him up. “Mage! Can you heal him?”

Kier shoved at Alistair, or tried to. His hands were floppier than usual. “Nnnnng.”

“Shut up. Just… we’ll have you right in a few moments.”

Another set of hands cradled Kier’s jaw, thumbs pressed into the back of his aching head. Coolness followed, and tingling. The pain receded enough that Kier could make his mouth work.

“Beacon. No time. Go.”

With one last, agonized look that would be burned into Kier’s memory, Alistair scrambled for the pile of kindling. Kier slumped and let himself fall into the soothing coolness of the mage’s ministrations.

Or he tried. An itch started up under his skin, the burning of many whispers rising. He struggled to sit up, to speak. To warn.

“More… darkspawn,” he gasped, before the whispering tide washed over him and he was plunged into darkness.


	4. Alone

“If ‘tis a weapon you are seeking, you will be disappointed. You’re more like to find one of mother’s missing socks. She is ever losing them. I think she does it on purpose.”

Kier froze where he lay, face mashed into a soft bundle of rags, hand halfway down the side of the bunk  in search of his daggers. He knew that taunting voice, and trusted it at least enough to slow his pounding heart and make him slightly less desperate to arm himself.

He pushed up with one hand, grunted when the movement awoke aches in every part of his body. Resigning himself to discomfort, he sat up. A thick wool blanket slid to his hips, leaving him bare-chested and goose-fleshed from the cold. It was the scratchiness of the blanket against his skin that had awoken him, close enough to the feel of nearby darkspawn that he’d unthinkingly gone for the dagger he always kept at his side when he slept.

But this wasn’t his bunk at home, nor his bedroll on the road, nor his cot at camp. There were no darkspawn, either. Just a woman who might be a witch of the wilds and who had somehow dragged his unconscious ass to…

“Where am I?” He rubbed grit from his eyes. Morrigan stood with her back to a workbench, paused in the middle of mixing some sort of remedy. The entire room reminded Kier of an herbalist’s shop. Every sort of plant hung on the walls, scenting the air as they dried. Earthen pots and clouded glass jars crowded shelves that rose from plank-wood floor to wattled mud roof. A fire burned sullenly in an open hearth, half-smothered by the bulbous bottom of a pot hanging from an iron fireplace crane. Another bunk was shoved against the wall opposite of Kier’s, piled with thick furs and wool blankets like the one puddled in his lap.

He frowned down at his bare chest and the stormcloud of bruises there, then back up at Morrigan. “More importantly, where are my clothes?”

Her lips curled into a half-smile. “An interesting set of priorities you have. Your clothes and armor are in the footlocker there. We did what we could to mend them.”

“We?” Kier was reluctant to dress when he had an audience, but Morrigan didn’t turn around, and he suspected she’d laugh if he asked her to. Clutching the blanket around his hips, he rose on somewhat wobbly legs and sank before the footlocker.

“Mother and I. How… much do you recall of what happened?”

Kier pretended she wasn’t peering closely at him as he pulled on his trews and socks and boots. Someone had washed his shirt as well as mended it, but it still sported several stains that could only have been his blood. “We were in the tower.” The jumble of memory began to settle into place. “There was an ogre. Alistair… I think he lit the beacon? And then there were more darkspawn.” Something about that was important. Kier’s stomach lurched when he realized what.

“Alistair! Is he—” He stood too quickly and swayed as the room tilted.

Morrigan steadied him. “I assume you mean the over-muscled, dull-witted one who came into the Wilds with you? He is out by the fire with mother. She plucked you both from your tower before you could be overrun and brought you back here for healing.”

Kier let her help him sit. She wasn’t… comforting, exactly, but her briskness steadied him in a way comfort wouldn’t have. “Plucked? How could she—” He gasped, grabbed Morrigan’s hand before she could withdraw it. “There were others. A mage. And a soldier.” Guilt swelled. He hadn’t even learned their names.

“You are the only two mother returned with.” Morrigan tugged her hand out of his grip. “No doubt these other two fell along with everyone else.”

Kier closed his eyes. “Everyone?”

“Your King. His army. Though I suppose not the entire army.” She paused just long enough for Kier to look up at her in hope. “The man who was to respond to you signal quit the field with his forces intact. So he and his survived. That is something. Your friend is not taking it well.”

Heat crept up Kier’s neck and face at Morrigan’s casual dismissal of so many lives lost. Only the fact that he owed her—or her mother—his life kept him from telling her off.

“Thank you, Morrigan, for your assistance.”

His quiet, careful diction seemed to unsettle her. She backed up a step, watched him warily. “Yes. Well. Mother did most of the work. ‘Tis her you should thank.”

“So I should.” Kier stood again, waited for the floor to settle beneath him, and left the hut.

Woodsmoke greeted him when he opened the door, and the smell of something roasting, the green, mulchy scent of the Kokari Wilds, and Alistair’s gasp.

“You… you’re alive.” He stood, dropping a paring knife and a half-peeled turnip, and closed the distance between them. “Maker, I thought I’d lost you.”

Kier wasn’t foolish enough to think that Alistair’s relief was anything to do with _him_ personally. He could have been any of the recruits—Solona, Natia, even Theron—and Alistair’s reaction might have been the same. That didn’t prevent the warm rush of an emotion Kier didn’t wish to examine at the look on Alistair’s face.

“Told you he was alive,” Morrigan’s mother grumbled from her seat on the other side of the firepit. “But nobody listens to an old woman.”

“Perhaps if an old woman did more than mutter nonsense to herself,” Morrigan said in the singsong she used when taunting her mother. She sidestepped around Kier and took up Alistair’s abandoned paring knife, glaring at the both of them.

Alistair paid no heed to their sniping. “Flemeth—Morrigan’s mother—she said you would wake, but after everything else…” Alistair lifted his hand as though to touch Kier’s cheek.

Kier shied back. Catching Alistair’s wrist and arm at the elbow, he steered him to the logs ringing the firepit and forced him to sit. “What about everyone else?” He looked at Morrigan over the spitted bodies of two roasting hares. “You said… the Teyrn—”

“We were too late.” Alistair buried his face in his hands. “When the beacon didn’t light in time, Teyrn Loghain retreated. Cailan, his army, the wardens, they were all… they didn’t have a chance.”

“Are you certain? Did you check?” Kier didn’t know much about large battles, but every veteran’s story he’d ever heard spoke of some survivors.

“I searched the field,” Morrigan’s mother—Flemeth?—said. “The darkspawn are not known for accepting parley.”

Alistair’s distress made more sense in that light. It wasn’t just the King or his forces or even the other wardens that he mourned.

“Duncan?” Kier whispered, and Alistair trembled in response.

Setting aside his discomfort at being touched, Kier slid his arm around Alistair’s shoulders. It was easier than dealing with the shock of losing his fellow recruits.

“Thank you… er… Flemeth.” His brow furrowed as he watched the old woman turn the rabbits on the spit, watched the daughter peel turnips, wrap them in leaves, and set them among the coals to bake. “If you don’t mind, how exactly did you rescue us?”

“Oh, you can’t expect us apostate mages to reveal our secrets,” Flemeth said. Reflected firelight glittered in her dark eyes.

Kier had seen what Solona could do, what the Teyrn’s mage could do. He couldn’t imagine the sort of power it would take to rescue someone from the midst of a darkspawn horde. He nodded and concentrated on the fire rather than the two women whose goodwill he wasn’t foolish enough to test.

Flemeth turned the spit, releasing rivulets of fat to slide down the sides of the hares and land spitting in the flames.

Kier’s brow furrowed. “You said the beacon was lit too late? That the Teyrn quit the field because he knew it was a lost cause?”

Alistair choked on a sob. Nodded. Tried again. “If the King’s forces were already overrun when the beacon was lit, then even a flanking attack would have been suicide—”

“How did he know?”

Alistair lifted his head, looked at Kier. His face was close enough that Kier could see the tear tracks down his cheeks and more threatening to spill. “What?”

Releasing Alistair, Kier grabbed a stick and sketched a rough map of Ostagar in the dirt. “The whole point of the beacon was to alert the Teyrn’s forces when the horde was in place for his attack. They were out of sight.” He tapped the King’s field of battle, the place where the Teyrn was to have waited, the bulk of Ostagar’s eastern approach between the two. “They couldn’t see the battle to know when to attack, which means they couldn’t have seen the King’s forces overrun. They couldn’t have known it was a lost cause unless they had already moved to engage. So why did he retreat?”

Alistair’s eyes widened as he studied Kier’s marks. His breathing came hard and unsteady. “That… I don’t know. Maybe—”

“That first day, when I was delivering messages and got yelled at by the Teyrn, it was over a message from Bann Loren saying he’d support Loghain against any Orlesian influence. No matter the cost.” And they’d both been at the King’s war table and heard Loghain’s arguments against receiving any Orlesian aid, even Orlesian wardens.

Alistair took Kier’s stick from his loose fingers. “So it wasn’t a senseless tragedy.” He traced the curve from the battlefield to where the Teyrn’s forces had waited… and retreated from. A route no man could have seen past. “It was treason.”

***

Alistair wore out his voice and everyone else’s patience that night with speculation. Why had Loghain turned traitor? When? How could he, being the Queen’s father? Flemeth and Morrigan gave up trying to silence him with glares or snark and fled the fire as soon as the hare was ready and the turnips roasted. Kier remained at Alistair’s side while the flames burned down, letting him tire himself out with ranting. Kier’s suspected his own opinions would not be nuanced enough to satisfy Alistair. Loghain was a shem noble, and this bullshit was exactly the sort of bullshit that shem nobles always pulled.

When Alistair’s ranting ran its course, Kier herded him into the hut. Flemeth and Morrigan had doubled up in one of the bunks—the one with all the blankets—leaving the other for Alistair and Kier.

“Uh.” Alistair kept his voice low, glancing at the sleeping women. “I can take the floor.”

Kier sighed, looked at the single blanket on the empty bunk, the pile covering their hostesses. Weighed the wisdom of snatching a few off the top, and decided he wouldn’t relish life as a toad.

But he also didn’t relish freezing through the night, and the hut wasn’t exactly warm.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he muttered, pulling off his boots but leaving the rest of his clothing on. He sat on the bunk and scooted to the side against the wall. “I shared with my cousins all the time.”

And if Kier woke from another nightmare and attacked Alistair in the middle of the night, well, at least he’d lost both his knives in the tower. Alistair would probably survive.

“Right.” The bunk creaked when Alistair sat to remove his boots. He settled with his back to Kier, clinging to the very edge. Despite his efforts, the bunk sagged, making it damnably hard to keep from rolling into him.

Kier didn’t bother trying. “Come here, idiot.” He wrapped an arm around Alistair’s waist until he relented and scooted closer to center. Kier dragged the blanket up, settled his arm around Alistair, and curled against his back. He radiated so much heat that Kier was toasty within moments.

But Alistair’s tension didn’t dissipate. Kier marveled at the irony that a human seemed more nervous about this situation than he did. “Relax,” he said, flicking the back of Alistair’s head. “Your virtue is safe with me.”

Alistair’s answering laugh sounded a little shaky, but slowly his breathing evened out and the tension drained from his body.

“Kier?” The whisper came just as Kier was starting to drift.

“Mmm?”

Alistair laid his arm over Kier’s and grasped his hand, squeezing gently. “Thank you. For surviving.”

“I do my best.” Kier squeezed back to communicate all the things he’d rather not say with two snarky witches asleep in the next bunk. “Besides, I can’t leave you to fight this Blight alone. We’d be doomed.”

Morrigan’s voice rose from the other bunk. “Truer words were never spoken. Now silence, or I will ensure that neither of you survive to see morning.”

Whatever Alistair muttered in response was too low for Kier to make out. Laughing softly, he snuggled closer into Alistair’s back and let sleep overtake him.

***

Morrigan saved Kier from any morning embarrassment by dumping their gear on top of them while they were still drowsing.

“’Tis time you were up and on your way,” she announced, standing over them with fists planted on her hips.

Alistair scrambled out of bed and snatched up his gambeson and armor. He drew breath as though to reply to Morrigan’s brusqueness, but her arched brow and significant glance at the bunk dared him to continue. His mouth snapped shut and he fled to the far corner to don his armor. Kier supposed that gave him the illusion of privacy.

Kier moved more slowly, yawning, stretching, running fingers through his sleep-mussed hair. He should have braided it, but he’d been so tired. Clearly, to have slept without nightmares. Perhaps he should always get an ogre to beat him bloody before bedtime.

“In a hurry to see us gone?” he asked Morrigan as he sorted his cuirass and cinched the straps. His weapon harness was there as well—no daggers in the sheathes, but he was more relieved than he would admit that Shianni’s ribbon was still tied to it, looking only slightly crumpled.

“I had to share a bunk with my mother last night, whereas you got to… hm.” She frowned at Alistair’s back. “No, now that I consider, I believe I come out slightly ahead.”

Kier wrinkled his nose at her. “Next time, you and I can share and Alistair can have your mother.”

“Hah! More like she would have him, and there would be no promises of safety for his virtue. Mother can be quite provocative.” They shared a smile at the choked sound that rose from the corner.

Alistair stalked across the room, paused at the door to glare at both of them, before letting the door creak closed behind them.

“His mood seems to have improved this morning,” Morrigan said.

Feeling guilty for poking fun at Alistair, Kier followed him out. Morning hit him like a dash of cool water—a chill that the sun hadn’t chased away, wet ashes and woodsmoke, and the low, double-hooted call of some sort of bird. It chased away the remnants of sleep.

Flemeth bent over a cauldron at fire’s edge, looking like a witch in truth, but instead of toads or bits of Templar, she spooned up a goopy porridge into a lopsided wooden bowl and handed it to Kier. Alistair had already collected his porridge and perched on the log he’d used the night before.

Kier sat next to him. “I think I lost both my daggers in the tower. I know Kend—uh. My primary broke in the ogre’s shoulder. We’ll have to get replacements when we get to… Where _are_ we going?”

Alistair stopped poking his goop around. Setting it aside, he lifted his shield to inspect it. “I don’t know. I don’t know where we _can_ go. We can’t return to Ostagar. The darkspawn horde may have moved on, but there will be stragglers. We should do something to expose Loghain’s treachery, but what? And to whom? I wish…” His fingers brushed over the Warden griffon emblazoned on his shield. “I wish Duncan was here. He would know what to do.”

Kier watched Flemeth devour her goop. She watched him in turn with a golden gaze that unnerved him. He dropped his gaze first. “Duncan would say that the Blight was our first—our only—responsibility.” He chewed his lip and glanced sideways at Alistair, hoping he hadn’t offended. “At least, I think. I don’t know. You knew him better.”

But Alistair nodded. “No. You’re right. But I have no more idea how to stop the Blight than I do to stop Loghain.”

“The Orlesian wardens?”

“Will present themselves to the Queen, which effectively means Loghain. If they’re lucky, he’ll only send them back to Orlais.” Alistair slammed his fist against his thigh. “How can he do this when we’re facing a Blight?”

Flemeth’s snort drew their attention. “It seems to me that this Loghain is used to fighting human armies. Perhaps he thinks a darkspawn one can be reasoned with.”

Kier thought back to Ishal, to his suspicion that the darkspawn had known about the beacon, but he couldn’t see any way that Loghain might have conspired with them. Alistair was right. Darkspawn were only slightly more cunning than maggots.

“If we can’t trust Loghain,” he mused aloud, “and we can’t depend on more wardens coming then... what about the treaties?”

Alistair sat up. “Treaties?”

“Orzammar, the Dalish, the Circle… none of them are under Loghain’s control. If we can convince them to help… you do still have the treaties, right?”

“Yes, they’re—Redcliffe!” Alistair steadied Kier when he jumped. “Sorry. I just realized. Arl Eamon. His forces were delayed. They should still be at Redcliffe. He’ll listen to me. Us. And he was Cailan’s uncle. He’ll never stand for Loghain’s treason.”

“An Arl,” Kier said faintly. _Great_. He concentrated on eating his goop. “I suppose we can add that to the list. We should probably find out what’s going on before we decide.” He looked up at Flemeth. “I don’t suppose you have anything to add?”

“No, you two seem to be doing remarkably well on your own. It sounds to me like you’ve the makings of an army, and a more trustworthy one than the one you came with. But I suppose there is one way I can aid you. Morrigan!”

“Yes, mother. You needn’t screech. I was just finishing packing for our guests.” Morrigan backed out of the hut, arms full with two packs. She dumped them in the dirt at Kier and Alistair’s feet. “There is no need for gratitude,” she said before either of them could ask what was in the packs, much less offer thanks. “We are quite happy to send you off with our valuable resources if it will speed you on your way.”

“Of course we are,” Flemeth said, eyes almost glowing as she smirked at her daughter’s pique. “The Blight threatens us all. It is the least we can do to make sure the Grey Wardens defeat it.”

Morrigan huffed. “Yes. I suppose it is.”

“And that means we should do more than our least. Prepare a third pack, girl,” Flemeth said. “You’re going with them.”

***

Morrigan’s protests were exceeded only by Alistair’s, and Flemeth seemed more interested in antagonizing her daughter than convincing her. Kier finally snapped at all of them to shut it unless they wanted the Blight to win while they bickered.

They were on the road—or lack of road—by mid-morning. Morrigan was a fair guide, but she started snippy, and when Alistair retreated into silence rather than rising to her bait, she sulked. Kier wondered if she disliked his fellow warden as much as she pretended, or if she just didn’t know how to be anything but provoking. Whatever the case, most of the day passed in weighted silence punctuated by the odd darkspawn fight.

Those fights left Kier grateful to Flemeth for another reason—the two knives she’d given him as they prepared to leave. Sleek, perfectly balanced, with a ripple worked into the metal of the blades that made the silverite look like it was forged out of water.

“They’re from one of those Templars you were so concerned about, so I hope you’re not squeamish,” she’d said when Kier ran his thumb over the crest worked into the sheath. “But they’re too long to be of any use in cooking, so you might as well take them.”

They gave Ostagar a wide berth and stayed east of the Imperial Highway as they headed toward Lothering. Kier was happy for Morrigan’s help despite her sniping. He was fairly certain he wouldn’t have been able to find his way through the Wilds to Lothering if Andruil herself had marked the way.

But that thought made him think of Theron, which made him think of the others, and he sank into his own quiet melancholy. He toyed with the ends of the blue ribbon, curling them around his finger. He and Alistair would stop the Blight. For his fellow recruits. For Duncan. For his father and Soris and Shianni. Kier had no idea how to stop shem nobles from playing their games with people’s lives, but these whispers just out of hearing, the itch beneath his skin… wasn’t stopping that the whole purpose of the Grey Wardens?

“We will arrive in Lothering by late tomorrow, or early the next day at the latest,” Morrigan said when it grew too dark to continue. “Have you decided where we are to go from there?”

“We need information before we decide anything.” Kier rooted through the supplies that Morrigan had packed for them. And he’d thought the trip from Denerim had been and exercise in privation. “And more gear. Which means more money.” He chewed his lower lip. He could probably pick a few pockets and lighten some merchants when they got to Lothering, but it wasn’t exactly the sort of thing a warden should do. Was it?

Duncan would do it, if there was need. Kier would just have to ditch Alistair and Morrigan.

“I will leave such concerns to you. _I_ have never had any need for money.”

Not that ditching Morrigan would make him cry many tears. He waited until her back was turned to make a face at it.

“We should decide on watches,” Alistair said, dumping a load of dry kindling onto a bared patch of ground and stacking it for a fire. “I think we’ve left the darkspawn behind for now, but there are other dangers to consider.”

“It speaks.” Morrigan clasped her hands to her chest, feigning astonishment. “Does this mean you are done with feeling sorry for yourself?”

Alistair stood, fists at his sides. Kier stepped between them before Alistair could do something he’d regret later.

Well, _might_ regret. “Morrigan, why don’t you take first watch and wake me for second. That way you both get an uninterrupted stretch.”

“No.” Alistair rubbed his jaw, fingers rasping through stubble. “I’ll take second—”

“Put it this way. I don’t have to worry about what might happen when Morrigan wakes _you_ up.”

Morrigan’s laugh pealed through the clearing. “Now that is what I believe is called enlightened self-interest. I will take the first watch as you command, Warden.” She gave Kier a mocking little bow—but what did she do that wasn’t mocking? “Do not concern yourself with food or a bedroll for me. I can care for myself.”

Turning her back on them, she raised her arms. The feathers in her hair and at her shoulders swept down her limbs at the same time her body contracted.  Between one blink and the next, Morrigan was gone and a black raven had taken off into the gloaming. Its caw drifted back to them, reminiscent of Morrigan’s cackle.

Alistair made a strange, choking noise. “Did she just turn into a bird and fly away?”

Kier peered up between the branches, but if Morrigan was still there, she blended too well with the shadows to tell. “I guess you were right to be concerned about swooping.”

Alistair groaned. “And thank you for reminding me of that.”

“When really, you should be more concerned about pooping.” Kier shot him a sideling smirk.

“I hate you. I really do.”

Chuckling, Kier went about scrounging up some dinner.

***

“You can stop treating me like I’m going to fall apart,” Alistair said, poking at the dwindling fire with a bit of wood before tossing it on top of the pile.

Kier grimaced and pretended great interest in a pine cone near his side. He hadn’t meant to be quite so obvious about it. “I left my home, my entire family, in Denerim, and Duncan let me sulk for two weeks. I think the least I can do is give you two days.”

Alistair’s huff wasn’t close to his usual chuckle, but at least it was in the vicinity of a laugh. “I know you didn’t know him enough to really mourn him.”

“He saved me.” Kier stripped seeds from the cone, tossing them into the fire to make them pop. “That’s all I need to know.”

“Right. From the repercussions of shaving horses. Or was it bees in the Landsmeet?”

Peering up at the stars, Kier tapped the pine cone to his lips and pretended to consider. He waited until Alistair took a pull from his waterskin to answer. “I think it was spreading birdseed over the tent-tops of Denerim’s market that did it.”

Kier was beginning to enjoy making Alistair sputter. He pounded the man’s back until Alistair caught his breath. “I take it the swooping was bad?” Alistair managed to gasp.

“Mm. But the pooping was worse.”

An offended caw from somewhere in the trees broke their grins into laughter. But the laughter faded. And the grins. They were left with the crackle of the fire and the wind shifting the leaves overhead.

“He was from Highever.” Alistair’s voice was softer than either sound. “Duncan. He told me that, once. I know there’s no time for it now, and we may not survive, and there aren’t any remains to burn, but I’d like to go there after this is over. To set him to rest.”

It seemed fitting. If Duncan had any happy memories, Kier suspected they were from Highever rather than Val Royeaux. “Highever. It’ll be nice to see it. When _we_ go.” He pretended not to notice Alistair’s surprise or his look of gratitude. He rose, stretched until his shoulders and spine popped like the fire. “I should try to get some rest before Morrigan wakes me.”

Alistair scrambled to his feet. “Would you—” He blinked, looked away. “No. Nevermind.”

“Would I what?” Kier wondered if there was some other act of mourning that wardens were expected to do, but if that was the case, why would Alistair blush? Or perhaps it was just Kier’s imagination and the fire’s reflection.

“I… don’t worry about it. It’s fine.”

“What?” Kier asked, and then realized where Alistair was looking. Their bedrolls, set on either side of the fire.

Ah.

He gathered his bedroll up and plopped it down next to Alistair’s, tugged the padding and blankets into place for them to share.

“You don’t have to—”

“No, it’s a good idea. It’s too cold to split the blankets we have,” Kier said, as though that was the only reason Alistair would make such a request. He pulled off his boots and set his daggers next to them. “At least you don’t snore. My cousins make more noise than a flock of geese.”

He waited for Alistair to get over his embarrassment, to shuck his boots, to tentatively climb in. And then, as he had the night before, pulled and nudged the man until Kier could curl up against his back.

He hadn’t been lying. He was far warmer like this, and the soothing hum of Alistair’s presence blocked out the distant song that Kier had been working all day to ignore.

***

A run in with a fleeing tribe of Chasind meant they didn’t make Lothering the next day. That night, Kier didn’t wait for Alistair to ask. He set up their bedrolls together and raised a brow at Morrigan, daring _her_ to say something. She wisely turned into a raven and flew into the trees, any commentary reduced to unintelligible caws.

Kier and Alistair settled into what was fast becoming their regular position, on their sides with Kier curled around Alistair’s back.

But Alistair remained tense, and Kier didn’t think it had anything to do with their proximity, not after two nights of it.

“Spill it,” he said, tapping Alistair’s temple.

Alistair grabbed Kier’s hand, clasping it tightly. “There are things I should tell you. Before, at Ostagar, you asked if Duncan was my father.”

Kier tugged his hand out of that tight grip. “Sorry, nose itched,” he lied, and tucked his hand out of easy reach behind Alistair’s shoulder. “Was he?”

“No. No, I never knew my father.” Even as close as they were, Kier had to strain to hear that. “I grew up an unwanted bastard until they sent me to the Templars. Which I suppose is better than what most bastards get, but I never wanted it.”

Kier shifted his hand to rest it against Alistair’s shoulder, moving it in soothing circles like Shianni did for him when his mother was taken by the guard. “Who is they?”

“That’s part of what I have to tell you.” Several moments of silence passed, then Alistair exhaled and rolled onto his back. Scant starlight and dying embers were their only light, but even that was enough to reveal the conflict twisting Alistair’s lips and furrowing his brow. It was the only thing that kept Kier from scuttling away.

“My mother was a servant in Redcliffe,” Alistair finally worked himself into saying. “Arl Eamon took responsibility for my fosterage when she died. That’s why I think he will help if we go to him.”

Kier gaped down at Alistair. Underneath his clenched fingers, he felt the thudding of Alistair’s heart. The man might throw that news out as though it was nothing much, but something about it distressed him. Kier knew because his heart was beating just as fast. _Please, please don’t be another Arl’s son._

“Does that mean this Eamon was your father?”

“No.” Alistair studied the stars. Likely, he couldn’t see anything of Kier’s expression past the shadows. “There were always rumors, but no. My father…” He shut his eyes, opened them to meet Kier’s. “I know he wasn’t the Arl.”

Kier sagged, resting his brow on Alistair’s shoulder. “What does this have to do with Duncan?”

Alistair smoothed Kier’s hair. “It was as you said. He saved me. Recruited me before I was forced to take my vows. He was my commander, but he was also my friend. I suppose it doesn’t seem like much, but he was the only person in my life to consider what I wanted… and what I didn’t want. Isn’t that what friends do?”

Closing his eyes, Kier let those words tickle the hair at his brow, let them breathe calm into him. He lifted his head just enough to meet Alistair’s gaze. “Never really thought about defining friendship. Friends are the people who are in it with you.” Try as he might, he wasn’t able to keep his voice steady. Soris and Shianni had been his friends as much as they’d been kin. As had Solona, Natia, and Theron, for all that he’d known them barely a week. And now there was only Alistair, who didn’t frighten him and wasn’t an Arl’s son. Alistair, who was touching his cheek because he really _was_ as naïve as he seemed.

“I didn’t mean to make you cry,” he whispered. “I’ve been so wrapped up in my own grief, I wasn’t thinking. You’ve lost people too.”

 _I have you_. Kier drew breath to say it, held his breath as he realized that saying something like that would be at the top of a long list of bad ideas.

So he went for number two and kissed Alistair.

It wasn’t much of a kiss. Just lips, soft and warm, the taste of the mint they’d chewed before bed. The comfort of breath mingling and skin to skin. The kiss equivalent of rubbing a shoulder or smoothing someone’s hair.

And, for a wonder, Alistair didn’t shy away. When Kier pulled back, red colored his cheeks, but his eyes only showed confusion.

“Is…” Alistair cleared his throat. “Is that also something you do with your cousins?” Somewhere behind the breathless question was the ghost of his usual humor.

Kier’s answering smile was equally tentative. “No. That’s…” he couldn’t meet Alistair’s eyes. He focused on his jawline instead, the way the firelight burnished the stubble there. “It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just comfort. Between friends.”

Another pass of warmth and mint brushed Kier’s lips, sending tingles spreading over his scalp. “A bit of comfort would be nice,” Alistair whispered without pulling away, so that Kier felt his words as much as heard them.

And that was all it was. Comfort. Nice. Noses bumping and the occasional rough brush of stubble when they wandered further than each other’s lips. Kier kept the kissing light, his hand soothing rather than searching as he slid it behind Alistair’s head. And Alistair didn’t push, didn’t try to tighten his embrace or deepen the kisses. The most he did was curl a lock of Kier’s hair around his finger, a hold that Kier could have broken at any moment if he needed to.

They must have fallen asleep at some point. Kier woke at Morrigan’s nudge to find himself sprawled halfway across Alistair and warm as a cat on a stove. He managed to extricate himself without raising more than a mumbled protest from his human pillow. He walked the perimeter of the camp to stretch his legs and clear his mind. And to escape the guilt and Morrigan’s gaze.

Of course, she had to follow him. “’Tis none of my business, of course, but are you certain that is wise?” she asked, nodding at the sleeping lump backlit by campfire embers. “I would hate to die of the Blight should you fall into a lover’s quarrel.”

Kier kicked at mulch. How could he explain to her what he couldn’t understand himself? He’d kissed a shem. Repeatedly. No pretending he’d imagined otherwise when his cheeks were warm from stubble burns. It was too far from anything serious to worry about lovers’ quarrels, but not far enough to keep Kier from fretting over what the fuck he’d been thinking.

“You’re right,” he said after he’d let the silence hang too long. “It is none of your business.” Ignoring her huff, he returned to the campfire. “Goodnight, Morrigan.”


	5. Lothering

“It might be best if we split up,” Kier said, eying the refugee camp on the outskirts of Lothering from the vantage of the Imperial Highway. The town itself was walled, only the rooftops visible and the spire of the local chantry rising above them all. The refugee camp spilled out on the near side of the wall, a haphazard collection of tents and wagons, lines of laundry, and smoke from dozens of cookfires.

It didn’t look like the sort of place where they would find money to spare or goods for sale, but that wasn’t why Kier had made the suggestion. Coming into Lothering, they’d driven off some bandits claiming to be toll takers—after Kier had extracted a toll from them—but that money wasn’t nearly enough to cover their needs. Which meant Kier had to get rid of Alistair without Alistair realizing he was being gotten rid of.

“Morrigan, you know this place best. Can you find where we might get gear? Food, maybe a tent, more blankets. Beds for tonight.” Kier breathed a little too deep and caught a whif of the camp—refuse, excrement, and unwashed bodies. “And _baths_.”

“Of course,” Morrigan said with an amiability that Kier suspected would bite him later. She turned to Alistair. “And would you also like a bed and bath, or will you be sharing?”

Or it would bite Kier right now.

Alistair, bless him, had climbed out of his depression and was once again ready to spar with her. “Oh please don’t trouble yourself on my account. Although if you’re interested in doing me a favor, you could find me a razor, strop, and soap.”

Morrigan barked a laugh. “You trust _me_ to find you a razor?”

“Unless you’re concerned that I might cut myself on it. I know how dearly you value my safety.” He smiled at the quandary he’d just handed her. Kier had to struggle to contain his smile. If she found Alistair a razor, she’d be doing him a favor, and if she refused, he would tease her for worrying about his well-being.

Morrigan scowled as she realized the trap. “You… ugh. Fine. There is a public house just over the bridge. I will await you there when you have finished your business.”

“Nicely played,” Kier said while Alistair waved at her departing back.

“Yes. This warm, fuzzy feeling is going to make every nick worth it. So, where are we starting?”

Kier wondered if Alistair had deliberately handed leadership over to him, or if it was just the habit of a man who’d always been on the lower rungs of a military structure. Either way, it unnerved him almost as much as the memory of kissing did. He’d never known a human to defer to an elf.

Which led back to thoughts of Alistair underneath him and soft kisses and really, Kier needed to get his head out of his ass and down to the business at hand. “You are starting at the Chantry. Talk to whoever’s been left behind to guard the town. See if you can get a reward for driving off those bandits. Check the Chanter’s Board for any day work. Only day work. I want to be on the road again by morning, but I wasn’t kidding about baths and beds tonight.” Kier headed down the steps, turning off the path that Morrigan had followed into town.

“Me alone? What about you?” Alistair jogged after him, sounding—and looking—like a puppy being left behind. And that shouldn’t make Kier hesitate as much as it did.

“I think you’re better suited to speaking with the authority types. I’m going to chat with the refugees and hear what they have to say. Chances are they were closer to Ostagar. They might have spoken with Loghain’s retreating troops or seen survivors.”

“I suppose that makes sense. Just…” Alistair laid a hand on Kier’s shoulder and then didn’t seem to know where to take the gesture. He settled for a light squeeze. “Don’t shave any horses.”

Kier grinned. “No horses, no bees, no birdseed.” With a jaunty salute, he headed into the refugee camp.

Once Alistair had disappeared beyond the town gates, Kier slipped right back out of the camp. Most of the folk there were human rather than elven, but poor was poor, and Kier wasn’t about to steal from them, not even to stop a Blight that threatened them all.

Merchants who preyed on such folk, now that was another matter. And there were always such parasites to be found. That was human nature.

Kier found his mark, a bloated tick of a man arguing with a chantry sister and several refugees about the prices he was charging for basic necessities. All the while Kier threatened and cajoled the man down to a compromise, he was pocketing trinkets from the man’s wares. Possibly the last things of value the refugees had to trade.

Which meant, of course, that Kier’s niggling conscience took him back to the camp to find the owners. Most seemed to have moved on, but he succeeded in returning a woman’s wedding ring and an old man’s silver hip flask. He was following a lead on a comb inlaid with pearl, searching near the town wall where the camp was at its most packed, when a sapling-thin elven boy raced past him. In his wake lumbered a troupe of humans wearing the arm-badges of local militia.

Kier shoved the comb into his pack and followed. He rounded a wagon in time to see the boy cornered against the town wall. One of the shems backhanded him hard enough to send him reeling. The boy righted himself just as quickly, shook blood from his eyes and glanced from side to side, looking for escape. The rest of the militia, confident that they had him trapped, started shouting the usual jeers—rabbit, knife-ear, thief, get out, you’re not wanted, you’re going to pay.

Someone grabbed Kier’s arm when he went for his daggers, dragging him behind the wagon. Kier’s wild swing caught Alistair at the temple, his foot connected with the greave protecting Alistair’s shin. They both grunted in pain.

“Let go,” Kier growled.

Alistair released him, but he still blocked the way. “Kier, you can’t—”

“The fuck I can’t.” Fuck them. _Fuck_ them, and fuck Alistair for stopping him. He was trembling with so much fury that his hands shook. Until he drew his daggers. Then everything went still. “Get out of my way.”

“I only meant… we can call the guard.”

“That _is_ the guard.” He would have said more, but a cry from beyond the wagon reminded him that he didn’t have the time. “Move.”

Alistair moved, but he followed as Kier charged at the backs of the militia. “Kier, we can’t—there’s a bounty—the wardens—oh, Andraste’s flaming knickers, I’m going to regret this.” He readied his sword and shield.

The militiamen scattered like pigeons when Kier landed among them. He wanted—oh how he wanted—to unleash on them all the deadliness that he’d been using against darkspawn this past week, but Alistair used the flat of his sword and the face of his shield, subduing rather than killing. Kier kept to pommels and punching, even as his fury at Alistair rose for guilting him into restraint.

By the time the militiamen were down, the elven boy was long gone. Kier loomed over the best armed and armored of the lot. “If you’re looking for something to beat on, beat on the darkspawn. They’re the real threat. Leave the refugees alone.”

Blood spilled through the man’s fingers, cupped around his newly-broken nose. “I don’t take no orders from a fucking knife-ear.”

Kier knelt and slapped the flat of his dagger along the man’s jaw. “This is a Blight, and this knife-ear is a Grey Warden. So unless you want me to put you out of your misery before the darkspawn get to you, you _will_ leave the refugees alone.”

There was something satisfying about watching the man’s eyes widen in fear and understanding, but Kier hardly got to enjoy it. Alistair tugged his arm, pulled him away. “Kier, we have to go. Now.”

“Fine. I’m done here.” Yanking his arm out of Alistair’s grip, he sheathed his daggers and stalked away. New fury welled up, at the men, at Alistair, at himself for swinging so wildly out of control. This wasn’t how he dealt with shems, not how he answered to being called knife-ear. He watched and waited and got revenge by taking what was theirs and giving it to those they’d hurt. He robbed them. He humiliated them. He didn’t beat them. Didn’t murder them

Until Kendells.

He couldn’t breathe deep enough to banish the sickness in his gut, the tremors that shook his arms. A sob clawed at the back of his throat, and it was all he could do to swallow it down.

“Kier. Kier! Maker’s toenails, will you just stop?”

He couldn’t. Not until he had himself under control. Kier barged along the wall and through the gate into Lothering, shoving past the few villagers who didn’t scurry out of his way. He realized he was worrying his blue ribbon almost to the point of digging a hole into it with his thumbnail.

He forced himself to let it go. To stop at the edge of the road. To go through the names of gods his mother used to sing to him, that had become his calming mantra. _Elgar’non, Mythal, Falon’din_ … He got his trembling under control. “You have something to say?” he said in something resembling an even tone.

Ruffling his hair and smiling sheepishly at the passing villagers who were giving them curious and wary looks, Alistair leaned close. “Not here,” he said under his breath. “Can we—”

“If you don’t want to talk here, then why did you stop me?” Kier resumed stalking toward the public house. “Let’s go. Morrigan is waiting.”

At least Alistair stayed silent after that. Morrigan, waiting outside the pub’s door, took one look at Kier’s face and snapped her mouth shut on whatever snarky greeting she’d been preparing.

“You found us rooms?”

Her eyes darted from Kier to Alistair and back. “There are no rooms to be had, not that I would consent to sleep among the lot in there. But there is a merchant willing to barter for certain services. Oh, and I did acquire this.” She held out a cloth-wrapped bundle and flipped over the top fold to reveal soap, strop, razor, and brush. “It looks like you would dearly love to use it on him. May I watch?”

Ignoring her taunt and Alistair’s ‘Hey!’ Kier yanked open the door to the public house. A wall of familiar noises and scents hit him—the thick stink of sweaty bodies in a poorly aired room, spilled ale, and stew made from meat on the cusp of turning. Somewhere inside, a minstrel plucked a lute with courses slightly out of tune. Kier couldn’t see where because the place was filled with shems, all taller and broader than him.

He paused a moment to let his eyes adjust before pushing through the crowd toward where he hoped the bar was. “Where is this merchant?” he asked Morrigan.

She didn’t get a chance to answer.

“Here. You. Elf.” A shem in armor grabbed Kier’s arm just as Alistair had in the street.

And just as he had, Kier wrenched himself out of the man’s grip. “I am not a servant here. Get your own fucking ale.”

“Didn’t think you were a servant. Think you’re one of them Grey Wardens.” He turned to call over his shoulder. “Here, doesn’t he match the description?”

A second shem stepped up. “More than just matches. I seen him there. At Ostagar. That hair and face, hard to forget.”

Confusion doused Kier’s simmering anger. Alistair muttered a curse and tried to catch his attention.

“What do you want with the Grey Wardens,” Kier asked, glancing around. Several other men, all armored, joined the first two. The other patrons edged back to give them room. That couldn’t be good.

“We want you to pay for what you did at Ostagar.”

Definitely not good. “You mean die trying to stop the Blight? Because that’s what the Wardens did.”

The soldier spat at Kier’s feet. “Led the king into a trap, you mean. We’re lucky Teyrn Loghain pulled us out before we all died.”

Muttering rose up around them, not just from the soldiers, but from the other patrons crowding the taproom.

“This is what I was trying to warn you about,” Alistair said, just a breath of words brushing Kier’s ear. “Loghain shifted the blame to the Wardens and set a bounty on any survivors. We should leave.”

Kier wavered. There were a lot of people in the taproom, a lot of scared people looking for someone to blame. But fuck it if he was going to let them pin it on him.

“That doesn’t make sense!” He spoke for everyone to hear. “The Wardens were with the King. Defending him. Why would they make a trap they would also die in? The strategy was Teyrn Loghain’s. The man who conveniently _wasn’t_ on the field when the King and the Wardens died. The man who pulled out when he was supposed to engage his forces.” Kier stepped up to the shem and poked him in the chest. “So who had the most to gain?” Poke. “Who walked away unscathed?” Poke. “Who _didn’t_ attack when the beacon was lit?”

Each poke seemed to deflate the man. “He… he knew the battle was already lost…”

“How, when you couldn’t see the battle from your position?”

The man flinched and looked to his fellows for help, which was as good as a confession to anyone with eyes. Murmurs washed through the room. Even if Kier didn’t convince this asshole, he’d planted doubts in the others.

Seeming to realize the mood had shifted, the man rallied. “I won’t have you speaking against the man who saved our lives.” His hand wrapped around the hilt of his sword.

“Of course you won’t,” Kier muttered, backing up and drawing his own blades. Steel hissed as the other soldiers drew, too many to take easily, even with Morrigan summoning arcane shadows to swirl around her fingers and Alistair stepping up alongside Kier, shield at the ready.

“Gentlemen. Please, has there not been enough fighting?” The woman who inserted herself into the center of the standoff spoke and looked like every coquette in every traveling Orlesian mummer’s show Kier had ever seen. Hair as red as his, heart-shaped face, and rosebud lips that curved into a winsome smile as one hand fluttered to rest on the soldier’s chest and the other on Alistair’s wrist. Kier would have said she was flirting, except that she wore the sunburst robes of a Chantry sister, and he didn’t think they knew what flirting was.

“Stay out of this, Sister,” the lead soldier said, slapping her hand aside.

Something not-as-soft flitted across her face, a slight narrowing of the eyes and tightening of the smile. She stepped back—not to withdraw from the fight, but as Kier had—to give herself room to draw. “Are you certain you do not wish to reconsider? The Maker looks kindly on those who choose the path of peace.” Somehow, she managed to make the gentle aphorism sound like a threat.

The soldier must have heard the same threat. “Kill the wardens, and the sister if she gets in the—”

His command ended in a gurgle and a crunch of bone as Alistair introduced him to the Warden griffon on his shield. He stumbled back, and Alistair followed, doing what he did best—making himself a big, golden target for all the soldiers to beat on.

Kier slipped to one side, the chantry sister to the other as though they fought alongside on the daily. She filled the spaces he left absent, yielded when he went in for the strike, a dance set to the music of grunts and steel clashing. Kier was reminded of Daveth, if Daveth had been really fucking good.

Until the end, when she got in the way, and Kier had to pull the strike aimed at the leader’s back or risk hitting her. By the time he’d recovered, the soldier was on the floor, Alistair’s sword at his chest.

“Yield,” said Alistair.

The growl of protest in Kier’s throat was lost under the man’s frantic, “I yield! We yield!”

“What are you doing?” Kier hissed at Alistair.

“The Maker looks kindly on those who choose the path of peace.” Alistair nodded at the chantry sister, but his gaze flicked around the room at the watching villagers. The villagers who hadn’t joined in against them.

 _What you do reflects on the Order._ Tightening down on the anger that still heated him, the need to make these shems pay for what Loghain had done, Kier knelt before the downed soldier. He laid the edge of his dagger along the man’s jaw, as he had with the militiaman. “Take a message to Loghain.” He spoke for all the room to hear. “Tell him the Grey Wardens know what really happened at Ostagar. We know who betrayed the king. And once we’ve ended this Blight, there will be a reckoning.”

Standing, he swept the room with his gaze—frightened refugees and soon-to-be refugees. He sheathed his daggers. “But the Blight comes first. You should flee before it comes here.”

Leaving them to contemplate their priorities and loyalties, Kier strode out of the pub.

“Well, that was certainly dramatic,” Morrigan drawled as she joined him on the village green. “And you had concerns that I would be the one to draw attention. They hardly noticed the apostate in the room.”

 _Dirthamen, Andruil, Sylaise_ … Kier took a deep breath, and another, letting the cool air fill his lungs and clear his mind of the heat of anger. He released the rest of it on a shaky sigh. “I’ve always had trouble staying unnoticed,” he said, touching his cheek where the edge of his tattoo scrolled. “It’s the hair.”

“Trouble with your temper as well, it seems,” she said.

“That’s the hair’s fault, too.” Kier’s rueful grin faded when Alistair and the sister joined them. He ignored Alistair, gave the woman an awkward, cross-armed bow. Chantry folk always made him nervous. “Thank you, Sister, for your assistance.”

“I was happy to help. We need the Grey Wardens if this Blight is to be stopped, no? I only wish I could do more.”

Alistair shouldered his shield. “Do you know a place we can stay the night?” He glanced back at the inn. “I suspect we’ve worn out any welcome we might have had.”

The sister clapped, beaming. “Oh, but I do! I have a cell all to myself at the chantry. The other lay sisters have already fled. There should be more than enough room for you. That is, if you do not mind sharing?”

“Why haven’t you? Fled, I mean,” Kier asked. She seemed nice, if too devout for his comfort, but life had taught him to be suspicious of folk who were too helpful, and he couldn’t dismiss how good she was with both blade and charm.

Her sunny smile clouded over. “Perhaps I was waiting for a sign. Perhaps I was waiting for you.”

Well, that did little to allay his fears. Kier weighed the danger of accepting her aid over the aggravation of camping among the refugees and found he didn’t care enough to protest. “Fine. Yes. Thank you for the offer, Sister…?”

“Leliana.” Her smile peeked out again.

“Kier. Alistair. Morrigan.” He pointed at each in turn. “You two go with the sister. I’ll meet you back at the chantry. I have something to see to.”

“Kier!” Alistair chased after him as he walked away. “Can we talk about—”

“Later. Just… get the supplies we’ll need. This should cover it.” He dumped the trinkets he’d stolen and the few coins he had into Alistair’s hands, keeping only the comb. “We’ll talk… later.”

He left, grateful that Alistair didn’t try to follow.

***

Lothering was small, smaller even than Denerim’s alienage. Small enough that gossip spread quickly among the permanent residents. Before long, the curious looks cast Kier’s way shifted. Angry, speculative, hopeful, they ran the gamut. He found himself fleeing for the deserted Imperial Highway just to escape them.

Nobody had cleared the blockade of crates, wagon parts, and broken furniture left by the bandits, nor had any new bandits taken up residence. At least, so Kier thought at first, until he heard a snuffling from inside the structure. He jumped when one of the makeshift towers toppled, crashing and scattering across the causeway.

His daggers were out a moment later. He crouched behind a crate. “Who’s there? Show yourself!” At least there were no tingles or whispers warning of darkspawn. In fact, there was a warm hum that reminded him somewhat of—

“ _Whuff_.” The massive, square-jawed head of a mabari poked out from the debris. Two wide-splayed paws squeezed out the same hole, scrabbling at the narrow opening. The entire structure shook as the mabari tried to wiggle free.

“Da’fen?” Surely this had to be some other mabari, but… no. This one had the same wolfish brindled coat and long-legged ranginess as the sick hound he’d played with back at Ostagar.

“ _Arp_!” the mabari barked happily in what certainly seemed like the doggy equivalent of a yes.

Kier gaped. Da’fen scrabbled. The barricade wobbled dangerously.

“Wait. Stop. Stay!” Kier gave the hand gestures that the houndsmaster had used, and Da’fen stilled.

Dismantling the barricade took quite a bit of time and effort. Kier was sweaty and splintered by the time Da’fen could wiggle free safely.

“How did you even get in there?” he marveled. He was answered by a cheerful ‘ _whuff_!’ and the full weight of a mabari’s front paws coming down on his shoulders when Da’fen rose up on hind legs for a proper greeting.

Kier toppled back on his ass and had to fend off happy mabari slobber with both arms. “Ack! Stop it, you slimy-mouthed beast. Plfph! Phaugh!” He resorted to protecting himself by slinging his arms around Da’fen and burying his face against the dog’s neck.

And somehow, that was all it took to dismantle the barricade Kier had spent the better part of the morning building so that he wouldn’t have to think about the elven boy, the militia, or Alistair’s thoughtless betrayal. Da’fen stood silent and warm while Kier sobbed into his coat.

***

The need to find Da’fen food and water eventually roused Kier from his crying jag. He led them north, skirting the town, in the hope that one of the abandoned farms would have a spare chicken running around. They lucked into a hutch with two coneys. After Da’fen made a bloody, crunching mess of his meal, Kier rinsed them both down from the farmstead’s pump.

The sun was molten gold poured over a mold of black hills when Kier trudged back toward the town proper. There was no gate here on the north end of town, nothing to mark the boundary other than an old windmill. Da’fen gave a happy bark and ran ahead. Kier picked up his pace, worried that the mabari would frighten some villagers who didn’t know he was friendly.

Instead of a villager, however, Da’fen loped toward a prisoner’s cage. A cage that didn’t seem nearly large enough to contain the prisoner inside.

Kier had heard of the Qunari before. Who hadn’t? A few years past, an elf calling herself Viddathari passed through Denerim’s alienage, preaching about the Qun until the Chantry drove her off. But Kier never expected to see a qunari, and certainly not in a one-crossroad town like Lothering.

The qunari was massive, grey-skinned and white-haired, shoulders hunched by the curve of the cage’s bars. He should have seemed old. Decrepit. Instead, he surveyed the world with a grim violet gaze that suggested not even the cage could stop him if he decided to hurt you.

Da’fen ran up to the cage and sat, tail thumping in the dirt, tongue lolling. A hand nearly as big as his head squeezed between the bars and scritched him behind the ears. Da’fen gave another of his happy _whuffs_.

Good enough an endorsement for Kier. He approached the cage, met the prisoner’s gaze without flinching. “He likes you.”

“Yes.” The qunari withdrew his hand. Kier stifled a flash of guilt. He hadn’t meant to stop him from petting Da’fen.

“You’re Qunari.”

“Yes.” The dismissive look he gave Kier made him feel very much like the rabbit the shems like to call his kind.

Which, of course, made him brash. “Who’d you piss off to get put in there?”

Gaze fixed on the black hills beyond Kier’s shoulder, the qunari said, “Everyone.”

Kier blinked. Waited. Nothing. The qunari could give lessons in stoicism. “What did you do?”

“I killed people.”

Fair enough, but Kier knew from experience that there was always more to such stories. “Did they deserve it?”

“No.”

Oh. Well then. He should leave. This was none of his business, and he had bigger worries with the Blight and Loghain. But then, when had he ever done what he should do? “So, what? They’re just going to leave you here until the darkspawn come?”

“It seems likely.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

The qunari finally stirred, but only to lower his violet gaze to meet Kier’s. “No.”

Resolve rather than resignation was what Kier saw in that gaze. Nothing about this seemed right, not least of which a village leaving a man for the darkspawn. Da’fen whined softly, and Kier curled fingers in his ruff, offering and taking comfort.

The qunari frowned down at them. “That creature is a brave warrior.”

Annoyed, Kier gave him back some of his own reticence. “Yes.”

“And yet he follows _you._ ”

Kier was tired of being dismissed. “He does. Guess that makes him an honorary Grey Warden.”

The cage creaked and swayed on its chain when the qunari shifted in response. He lifted his head, shoulders straightening as much as his cage would allow. “ _You_ are a Grey Warden?”

“Yes.” Kier bit down on a grin when his one-syllable answer seemed to frustrate the qunari.

“The villagers said the Grey Wardens all died in battle.” Stone-solid hands as big as Kier’s head wrapped around the cage bars, and Kier was half-convinced the qunari could rip his way out of the cage if he was so inclined. The qunari watched Kier with burning violet eyes. “If you are a Grey Warden, then you are going to fight against the Blight.”

“Rumors of our death were slightly exaggerated.” Kier had meant the comment to be light, but the thought of all those fallen at Ostagar weighed it down, and the awareness of the challenge he and Alistair faced buried it. Softly, resolutely, he continued, “And yes. We are going to stop the Blight.”

If he said it often enough, maybe he’d believe it.

The qunari rested his forehead against the bars of his cage. “It is my duty to learn more of this Blight and stop it if I can.”

Kier snorted. “Not going to stop much of anything from that cage.”

The glare the qunari shot him would have almost been comical if it weren’t so unsettling. “I know.”

Sighing, Kier glanced around. The sun had set, the villagers gone indoors to hide from the night. All the world was grey, in more ways than one. “Look, I don’t know the details, but no one deserves to be left to the darkspawn. I’m going to open that cage.”

Kier pulled out his picks and set to work on the lock, very aware that the qunari could reach through the bars and end him right there. “If you’re speaking truth about your duty, then my fellow warden and I will be leaving in the morning. North along the Imperial Highway. Meet us there, or don’t, but don’t kill any more people who don’t deserve it, or I will hunt you down and kill you myself.” The lock clicked. Kier opened the cage.

The qunari climbed out, stretching to his full height and sweet mercy he was even bigger than Kier had realized. He looked down on Kier with what might almost have been a smile. “I believe you would try.”

Fair enough. Kier wasn’t certain he would have taken the threat seriously, either. “Kier Tabris, Warden,” he said with a more abrupt bow than the one he’d given Sister Leliana.

“Sten of the Beresaad. I will meet you in the morning.” Copying Kier’s bow, he turned north and disappeared into the night with more ease than Kier would have expected for someone that massive.

“Yeah. Great.” Kier looked down at Da’fen. “And I thought explaining _you_ was going to be hard.”

The mabari wisely stayed silent.

***

Quiet filled the chantry yard, a soft, heavy sort of silence that hung on the air like incense, so different from the dreadful hush of Lothering’s streets. Alistair waited on the steps, stirring when he noticed Kier’s approach. His hair spiked every which way, as though he’d tugged it dry after washing. Stubble no longer gilded his jaw; he must have had his shave.

“You’re back. Maker, I was worried.” He spoke in a chantry hush, as though breaking the quiet of the yard would be sacrilege. “Would you please talk to—is that a dog?” Astonishment chased worry from his face. “Is that a _mabari_? Where did you get a mabari?”

Da’fen gave a happy—and loud—bark. Kier couldn’t help but grin at the wicked feeling of irreverence that came with breaking the hallowed quiet. “This is Da’fen. We met at Ostagar. I don’t know how he survived or found his way here.” He frowned at the chantry doors. “I hope they don’t mind him coming inside. I’d hate to have to sleep outdoors.”

“No. No, they shouldn’t…” Bemused, Alistair let Da’fen snuffle his feet and knees and lick his fingers. “It should be fine.”

“Good.” Kier hauled Da’fen away from Alistair by his ruff. “Come on, you silly beggar. He isn’t food and he doesn’t have food.” He headed up the steps, just barely dodging Alistair’s outreached hand.

“Kier—”

“I was angry. I’m not anymore. There’s nothing to talk about.” Talking would threaten the shaky peace Kier had found. He didn’t want to listen to Alistair explain why he’d tried to stop Kier, why protecting their identities had been more important than protecting an elven refugee who probably _was_ a thief. He didn’t want to risk hearing Alistair say that the boy might have deserved it.

“It still seems like you’re angry,” Alistair muttered under his breath. Kier pretended he hadn’t heard and entered the chantry.

Once they reached the lay sisters’ cell, the presence of Morrigan and Leliana kept Alistair from pursuing the topic any further. He settled onto one of the four narrow beds shoved into the space, tacking leather over the griffon emblazoned on his shield. Kier took another bunk, wolfing down a stew thick with barley. He sopped it up with bread made from the same grain, listening as Alistair, Morrigan, and even Sister Leliana shared what they’d learned over the course of the day.

“So, the Arl is sick, which, given the timing, might be Loghain’s doing. There’s a chantry scholar in Denerim who might know a cure, but that cure is a legendary relic that probably doesn’t exist. Loghain has named himself regent, and there’s no word from the Orlesian Wardens or the Circle of Magi?” He finished his soup and set the bowl before Da’fen to be licked clean. Pulling his legs up, he rested his chin on his knees, rubbing it back and forth along the rough wool of his trews as he thought. He should tell them about the qunari that might be waiting for them and was definitely a murderer, but maybe not in front of a chantry sister.

“Sister Leliana, we’re very grateful for your help, but could you let us talk alone for a bit? The less you know about our plans, the less likely you are to be dragged into trouble with us.”

Leliana sat on her bunk, mirroring Kier’s pose: knees pulled up, pointed chin resting on them. The mischievous grin was all her own. “Oh, but I fully intend to be dragged into trouble with you.”

“You what?”

“I am coming with you.”

Kier shot a questioning look at Morrigan and Alistair. Had this been decided without him? But Alistair shook his head and shrugged.

Morrigan, who’d slunk like a cat to the far corner of the cell when Da’fen entered, said, “It seems we are determined to pick up all manner of strays.”

So, a surprise to them as well. “Sister, that’s very kind of you—”

“No, no. I must go. The Maker told me to!”

Kier flinched. Leliana sat up, pressing both hands to her rosy cheeks. “Oh, I am doing this all wrong. What I mean to say is that I had a dream. A… a vision, of a great darkness spreading throughout the land until there was nothing left, until there was nothing left of myself. It was so real that when I woke I went to the chantry garden to pray and to reassure myself that the world was still as it was. There’s an old rose bush there that nobody has bothered to uproot. A dead, ugly, twisted thing. But that morning, I found a single, beautiful rose blossoming on that old, dead briar, and I knew.”

“What did you know?” Morrigan scoffed. “That rose briars can lie dormant for years before producing blooms? That is hardly a divine revelation.”

Leliana kept her focus on Kier, eyes so wide, so earnest. “That there was hope. Amid all this darkness and despair, there is hope. When you came into Dane’s Refuge and I realized the Grey Wardens weren’t all dead, I knew what it meant, what I had to do. I can help. I _have_ to help. You have to let me help.”

It was a troubling statement on the strength of Kier’s faith that he was more comfortable accepting aid from a murderous qunari than from a sweet-faced chantry sister who’d already given him bread, bath, and bed. Still, he’d fought by her side. He suspected even her stumble at the end had been calculated rather than accidental. Whatever she was now, once she had been deadly.

“Fine. Yes. You can come,” Kier said, as astonished by his acquiescence as Alistair and Morrigan were, to judge by their dropped jaws and raised brows. It was almost comical, how similar they looked in that moment. “I suspect having a chantry sister with us will deflect at least some suspicion, and you know your way around a pair of daggers.”

Still, it might be wise to hold off telling them about the uncaged qunari until they were away from the chantry that had put him in that cage.

Kier gave into the urge to yawn, lifting his arms and stretching his legs before folding them in again. Da’fen scrambled up beside him and plopped his head on Kier’s knee.

Digging his fingers into Da’fen’s ruff, Kier said, “We still need to decide where we are going.”

“Redcliffe,” said Alistair, at the same moment Morrigan said, “Denerim.” They glared at each other.

“This Loghain is the biggest threat to you,” Morrigan said. “As long as he holds power, he can send all of Ferelden against you. It is only sensible to take the fight to him. Then you may gather your armies at your leisure.”

“Yes. Right. I’ve heard this joke before,” Alistair drawled. “Two wardens, an apostate, and a chantry sister walk into Fort Drakon intending to depose the regent. And then they _died_. Which is what will happen to us if we take anything to Loghain right now.”

“Oh, my mistake. I assumed you were looking for vengeance. Clearly, you don’t dislike this Loghain as much as you protest—”

Alistair surged off his bunk, shield clattering to the floor. Morrigan rose to meet him. “I will _kill_ Loghain for what he’s done. _When_ I think I have a nug’s chance in a mabari kennel at defeating him. Arl Eamon can give us that chance.”

“Or he can die from this mysterious illness, and we will have wasted time and exposed ourselves to no purpose.”

Kier gave Leliana a ‘see-what-I-have-to-deal-with’ look. Standing, he inserted himself between the human cat-and-dog fight. “Enough. Both of you. Morrigan, put down your staff. Alistair, on your bunk. Now.” Shianni would have laughed at how much Kier sounded like his father just then. The though jolted him. Shianni. His family. If Loghain learned Kier was alive, what would that mean for Kier’s family?

 _You’re a Grey Warden now. You can’t let that affect your decision._ Except… to the Void with that bullshit.

“Alistair’s right. If we tried to strike against Loghain now, we’d just die.” It wasn’t like Kier hadn’t thought about deposing the nobility in an idle sort of way. ‘Kill the King’ was a favorite drinking game among his friends and cousins, and Kier was second only to Shianni for sheer inventiveness. He knew how impossible it was, unless… “We need the backing of the nobility, and that starts with the Arl.”

His skin twitched at having to say that, as though he’d been dumped in the middle of a swarm of darkspawn.

Alistair crossed his arms and nodded. “Thank you—”

“But Morrigan isn’t wrong. If the Arl dies, we’re fucked. And Loghain knows us well enough to pass around descriptions for our capture. The longer we wait, the harder it will be to do anything in Denerim. If this Brother Genitivi knows about a cure, better to find him and get it now.”

“Exactly the point I was trying to make,” Morrigan said, and Kier decided it would do nobody any good to correct her.

“So we go to Denerim?” Leliana asked.

Kier watched Alistair, waiting for him to disagree. Waiting for him to point out that he was the senior warden, the one in charge, and he wouldn’t be taking orders from some elf who’d been a warden for less than a week.

Alistair said none of that. He didn’t look happy, but he tipped his head to Kier, deferring to him.

Shit. Alistair really was ceding authority. Kier didn’t know whether to be pleased or unsettled by the gesture of trust. “Yes,” he said, voice gone only slightly wobbly. “We’re going to Denerim.”

***

Kier had many reasons to be grateful to Leliana. She snuck him down to the kitchens for a quick, lukewarm bath and a bone for Da’fen. Then she helped him wheedle more supplies out of the Templar captain. Back in her cell, the four bunks and mass of blankets meant that Kier could curl up with Da’fen instead of Alistair without it seeming too awkward. And if Alistair watched him with a furrowed brow and a slight frown, well, Kier was able to ignore that until Leliana put out the lamp.

The quiet invited the nightmares to return. Whispers Kier was learning to ignore rose to a crescendo and then fell to abrupt silence, like the silence of the chantry yard. A clear, high note broke that silence, so pure, so beautiful. Her followed it even though he knew he shouldn’t, knew something terrible waited at the other end—until he came to that end and saw a dragon, rising up before him to fill the sky. Its scales were tattered at the edges like burned velvet, black horns twisted and gnarled, and it was wrong, so wrong, twisted and tainted when it should have been beautiful.

They looked at each other, into each other, the dragon and Kier. And he knew it. And it knew him.

 _Kier_ , said a voice not his own. It held him, and he couldn’t pull away.

He woke sweating. Something heavy weighted his chest. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. He struck out, struggled, was about to scream—

Until a tongue wet with slobber swiped his face.

“Ugh! Da’fen! _Gephroff’blech!_ ” He didn’t think his shove would do anything to dislodge the dog, but Da’fen must have understood the order. He huffed into Kier’s slobber-covered face and bounded to the floor.

“Ugh. I smell like dog,” Kier grumbled, using his blanket to wipe away the worst of the slime.

“Oh, is that a bad thing?” Leliana asked. The others were all up, sorting their packs and grinning at Kier’s plight. Leliana grin turned sly as she directed it at Alistair. “I always thought Fereldens found that scent particularly appealing.”

Morrigan laughed, Alistair blushed, and Kier reconsidered his decision to let the sister come along.

They spent the morning dealing with bandits and some other chanter’s board postings for the money they’d bring, which meant they didn’t reach the Imperial Highway until the sun was high. Kier halted at the base of the ramp, causing Alistair to stumble over his own feet to avoid plowing into him.

“So. There’s… a thing. I did a thing. You all should probably know about it.”

Kier was saved from explaining more when Da’fen started barking his fool head off. He charged up the ramp just as Kier felt the wash of spider-leg tingles that heralded the presence of—

“Darkspawn,” he and Alistair said as one. Alistair ran after Da’fen. Kier drew his daggers and followed, Morrigan and Leliana hard on his heels.

Darkspawn choked the road, swarming over a merchant’s caravan. In their midst, wielding an axe that looked like it weighed as much as Kier, was—

“Uh. Right. That’s Sten of the Beresaad.” Kier patted Alistair’s shoulder. He’d stopped mid-charge, agape. “He’s with us.” There. Done. Kier waded into the fray.

Fighting alongside Sten proved to be the complete opposite of fighting alongside Alistair. Where Alistair drew the darkspawn to him, setting up all those lovely, oblivious backs, Sten scattered them with broad sweeps of his axe that he didn’t pull for anyone. Kier muttered a string of curses as he was forced to duck and leap to avoid being cleaved. Leliana, on the other hand—

Had she just _giggled_?

Kier left her to the deadly game of dancing around Sten’s axe and gravitated toward Alistair and the relative safety of a nice, predictable fight and a comrade who wasn’t as much a danger to Kier as he was to their foes.

The last of the darkspawn died in an explosion of chunks from one of Morrigan’s more needlessly messy spells. Leliana crouched to coax the dwarven merchants out from under their caravan. Morrigan poked among the bodies of darkspawn and dead travelers alike for anything of value.

Shouldering his axe, Sten frowned down at Kier and Alistair. “So, this is the other warden.”

“Yup. Sten, Alistair. That’s Morrigan and Leliana. Da’fen you already know.”

Sten spared barely an eye flick for the others. “Yes. I see now why you need my help.” Ignoring Alistair’s ‘hey!’ Sten turned south. “Let us move on.”

“Uh. Sten,” Kier said before he could take more than two strides down the highway. “Wrong way. We’re going north.”

“That makes no sense. The darkspawn are to the south.”

“Yeah, but…” Kier took one look at that granite-grey frown and decided it wasn’t worth the concussion to beat his head against such single-mindedness. “It’s complicated. To stop the horde in the south, we have to go north. To Denerim.”

Sten drummed his fingers on the haft of his axe. Once. Twice. He turned and trudged north.

Kier caught the look Alistair threw him once the qunari had passed them. He grimaced. “Look, it seemed like a good idea last night.”

“No, I think it’s a brilliant strategy. Who’s going to notice a couple of fugitive wardens when there’s a wild qunari rampaging through their city?” Alistair shook his head and trailed after Sten. Kier could just make out his muttered, “Stop me if you’ve heard this one: two wardens, an apostate, a chantry sister, and a _qunari_ walk into Fort Drakon… Maker preserve us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Da'fen_ \- Little wolf, but also a play on _da'len_ or 'little one', an elvhen term of endearment. Da'fen might be considered equivalent to calling him 'puppy.'


	6. Denerim

“Fine. You want me to say it? You were right.” Ale foam dribbled over the rims of the mugs that Kier thunked down onto the table. He sank into the chair opposite Alistair, crossed his arms, and glared at the empty back room of The Pearl. The ale served here was passable, but few people came to a brothel to drink. “I was wrong. You were right. We’re probably going to get killed or captured before we can escape this city, and you don’t have to look so smug.”

“Oh, this isn’t my smug look.” Alistair waved at a grin that looked pretty damned smug to Kier. “This is my ‘ladies love me’ look. I had to turn down the companionship of _three_ lovely women when they asked if your seat was occupied.”

Kier groaned and sprawled across the table, burying his face in his arms. To top it all, Alistair still hadn’t realized what sort of establishment The Pearl was. Kier wasn’t about to tell him, but eventually—whenever it was most awkward—Morrigan or Leliana would let something slip. They were evil like that.

It had been a trying week on the road. With the unexpected addition of Sten, Kier’d had to share a tent with Alistair. Morrigan and Leliana refused to share with each other, and once they’d heard the tale of how Sten had slaughtered an entire farmstead after waking from his sickbed, neither Kier nor Alistair was willing to share with the qunari. Kier made certain to set up his bedroll on the opposite side of the tent from Alistair’s, and to keep Da’fen between them.

After a few days, Alistair stopped casting confused, wounded looks his way. Their banter returned to normal—which was a relief because between Sten’s judgmental silence, Morrigan’s sniping, and Leliana’s Maker-be-damned cheerfulness, Kier thought he might go mad.

How did an Elder manage an entire Alienage without murdering everyone?

He’d breathed a sigh of relief when they’d finally reached Denerim. They left Sten with their gear outside the city—Alistair hadn’t been wrong about the effect a qunari, rampaging or otherwise, would have on the populace—and passed through Northgate without attracting notice.

That was where their luck ended. No sooner had they entered the north market than a soldier in burnished mail called them out as Wardens for anyone in the marketplace to hear. Kier had talked him down, but the confrontation drew the notice of the new captain of the market guard. Captain Kylon had recognized Kier right off as ‘that elf who was turned over to the Wardens,’ and it was only luck that he cared more about imposing peace in his district than he did about turning Kier and Alistair in. He pressed them into service in exchange for his silence.

And that was how they ended up at The Pearl. After warning off a band of rowdy mercs, Morrigan asked the grateful madam about their bathing facilities. Leliana shot a mischievous smile at Kier and Alistair before asking about other ‘amenities.’ Deciding that The Pearl was as safe a place as any to lie low while they searched for Brother Genitivi, Kier gave in and asked about amenity-free rooms.

He’d just have to hope that Alistair remained oblivious as to why the staff was so… friendly.

Alistair’s hand came down on Kier’s shoulder, squeezing lightly. “Cheer up. I still think we need to go to Redcliffe, but I don’t think you were wrong to come here. If it’s this bad now, how much worse would it have been if we’d delayed?”

Kier lifted his head just enough to peer at Alistair over his forearms. “You’re just saying that because you don’t want me to pass the ‘I’m in charge’ baton back to you.”

Alistair met his glare with a grin. “You know me so well.”

Kier supposed things couldn’t be that bad if Alistair smiled at him like that, and then groaned and banged his head against his folded arms, because that was the _last_ thing he should be thinking.

“Right, so. Best of a bad situation,” he said, forcing himself to sit up, to deal with the problem in front of him rather than the one in his pants. “We need to find this Brother Genitivi, and I need to check on my family. They’ll tell me what’s going on without turning me in. So, you check the Chantry to find out where Genitivi lives, and I’ll go to the Alienage—“

“No.”

Kier felt the slow rise of heat in his cheeks, the first herald of anger. He hid his clenching fists in his lap. “I don’t care if it’s not part of our duty, I am going to see my family.”

“What? Yes, of course! I wouldn’t ever suggest otherwise.” Alistair looked so honestly appalled that Kier’s anger cooled as quickly as it had kindled. “I only meant no, we are not splitting up. Last time you… brought back a mabari and a qunari. I’m afraid this time we’ll end up with… what rhymes with mabari and qunari?”

“Hm. A starry-eyed Nevarr-i?” Kier hadn’t missed the slight pause after ‘last time.’ He’d remained adamant in his refusal to talk about the incident with the militiamen, and Alistair had finally taken the hint and stopped trying to bring it up.

Alistair hid his grimace behind the rim of his mug. “Oh, ouch. I think someone should tell Leliana that it’s hopeless to train you to be a bard.”

Kier snickered. “No! No, I can do better. Um. A sorry chevalier-i?”

Alistair groaned and shook his head slowly. “Utterly hopeless. My point is, it’s dangerous for both of us, so we might as well stick together to make taking us harder for them.”

Kier traced swirls and hatches through the wet rings left on the table by their mugs. “I suppose you’re right.”

Alistair raised his mug “See how easy that was? Soon, you’ll be able to tell me I’m right without sounding like you resent it at all.”

“Mmhmm.” Kier plotted his vengeance, waiting for the right moment to strike. Waiting for Alistair to take a drink. “What about… a chary emmissar-y?”

Well-prepared, he dodged out of the way of the spray of ale that followed.

***

Kier let Alistair take the lead at the Chantry, stifling grins all the while the sisters and mothers and every other woman in sunburst robes cooed over him. It was Leliana who pointed out that the older ladies seemed the most taken with the former Templar and suggested that Alistair concentrate on them. That got a glare from Alistair and giggles from Kier.

Morrigan was going to be so sad she’d decided to wait outside.

They emerged triumphant with an address, and Kier led them through back ways to the more upscale merchant district east of the market.

Brother Genitivi’s house was wedged between a locksmith and a bookbinder. Twilight had dimmed into evening, and the shops were closed. The windows of the apartments above them lit, and the scents of roasting meats and herbs thick in the air from a dozen merchant dinners being cooked.

Nobody was out on the street at such an hour. If it weren’t for Alistair’s presence, Kier might have been tempted to sneak in through a window and learn what he could without Genitivi being the wiser. He was trying to come up with a way to float the idea when Alistair rapped on the lintel.

“Or that works too,” Kier muttered, standing straight in an effort to look legitimate.

After two more knocks with no answer, Kier nudged Alistair. “Try once more, and then I’m going in the window.”

“You’ll what?” Alistair stammered, just as the door cracked open.

Interesting timing, that.

“Who… who are you?” asked the young man—far younger than the Chantry sisters’ descriptions of Genitivi—who poked his nose through the crack.

“Oh, good!” Kier wedged his foot against the door, forcing it open a few more hands even as he gave the young man his most harmless, winsome smile. “We were beginning to think we’d wasted a trip from Redcliffe. See, I told you we were expected.” He shifted to grin at his companions, coincidentally nudging halfway through the door and forcing the young man to stumble back and allow him inside.

“Expected?” The young man yielded more room as Kier entered, followed by a bewildered Alistair, a bemused Morrigan, and a beaming Leliana—and Da’fen, who gave a soft _whuff_ and started snuffling around the edges of the room.

“By Brother Genitivi. Where is the old coot? Oi! Genitivi! Is this any sort of proper greeting?”

Before the young man could catch his footing and throw them out, Kier turned on him, still friendly and smiling. “But who are you? I don’t think we’ve met.”

Straightening his robes—robes that were several inches too short in sleeve and hem, Kier noted—the young man nodded, then shook his head, then nodded. “Yes. No. I mean, I am Weylon, Brother Genitivi’s assistant. Er… newish assistant. Probably why you haven’t met me. But this isn’t… Brother Genitivi isn’t here just now, I’m afraid. You’ll have to go.”

“After coming all this way?” Kier flipped a chair and sat on it backwards. “Naw. Easier if we just wait.”

Alistair opened his mouth to say something, but snapped it shut at Kier’s warning glare. Weylon’s fidgeting increased—nervous glances at Da’fen, flicking fingers that reminded Kier strangely of Solona Amell. “Well… that is… Genitivi’s been gone for weeks. No word of when he’s coming back. I already told those other knights.” He glanced at Alistair’s shield, the tacked-on leather covering bright with fresh paint depicting the arms of Redcliffe.

Alistair’s jaw tightened and his shoulders shifted in a way Kier had come to recognize as preparing for a fight.

So Kier wasn’t the only one who thought this situation stank like the Drakon in midsummer. He cocked his head, rubbing his brow. “Right. Sorry. Knights, you know? We’re not exactly bright. What did you tell the others, exactly?”

“That Genitivi isn’t here.”

“Where is he?”

“Er… an inn? Right. On Lake Calenhad. That’s where he told me he was going.”

Kier leaned forward. Sweat beaded on Weylon’s brow and lip, even in the chill of the room. “To look for the urn of sacred ashes.”

“Yes.”

The chair scraped the floor when Kier stood to crowd Weylon’s personal space. “Did he say why he was going there? What he hoped to find?”

“N-no! His notes just said Lake Calenhad!”

Leliana’s soft ‘ah’ and Morrigan’s sardonic huff broke the silence that followed Weylon’s declaration. And Da’fen’s snuffling. The mabari had found some sort of fascinating scent at the closed door leading to the back room. His claws scrabbled against wood as he tried to dig his way through the closed door.

“His notes?” Kier asked softly, drawing Weylon’s attention away from the dog. “I thought you said he told you.”

“H-he did. I meant that I went through his notes to see if I could learn anything else.” Weylon wiped sweat from his lip, glanced between the back room door blocked by a large mabari and the front door blocked by an armored warrior and two dangerous-looking women.

And Kier. “You seem very nervous.”

“Of course I’m nervous,” Weylon snapped. “You break in here and threaten me—“

“You let us in. And we made no threats. We’re just trying to find out what you know about Genitivi.”

“I told you! We—I… I didn’t find anything else!”

Kier let a beat pass, two, then said, “We?”

The façade crumbled from Weylon’s face and a sneer rose in its place. “Well, fuck. I tried. You should have left when you had the chance.” Weylon raised his arms, and fire erupted from his hands.

Alistair wrapped himself around Kier, shield raised to take the brunt of the flames. “I bet you made a habit of poking beehives as a kid,” he muttered against Kier’s cheek. And then he released Kier, bashed his shied into the mage’s face, and the fight was on.

Kier winced as, again and again, Alistair raised his shield to ward off gouts of flame. The tacked-on leather burned, the painted griffon underneath peeled away. Kier dodged around the mage, striking when he could, but his blades slid to one side and the other off a barely visible ripple of blue. Leliana yelped and glared when he came a hair’s breadth from tagging her cheek. A thin, red braid fluttered to the floor to be trampled underfoot.

Grimacing, Kier mouthed a quick _Sorry!_ but he had no breath for apologies.

His chance came with a hiss from the mage, the sizzle of flesh, and a swath of red ironed into the mage’s cheek by Alistair’s heated shield. The blue shield flickered; Kier slid his daggers home, one for each kidney. They slipped out again when the mage dropped.

Kier wrinkled his nose at the mixed stench of roasting meat and voided bowels. “Ugh. I am never eating bacon again.” He hid his nose in his sleeve and tried to catch a few clean breaths.

Alistair’s shield clattered to the floor. His gauntlet quickly followed. “Ow. Ow.” He blew on the reddened flesh of his arm, as though that would help. “Why don’t fire mages ever follow up with a nice ice-blast? Is that too much to ask?” he winged.

“I suspect few mages have ever been inclined to accommodate you,” Morrigan said, stepping past Alistair to kick at the body. “Perhaps if you didn’t lock them in towers.”

He mimicked her words at her back. “At least tower mages are taught healing magic.”

“What makes you think that I was not?” Morrigan’s grin rose as she knelt to root through the mage’s robes. “Perhaps I do know healing magic. Perhaps I also choose not to accommodate you.”

“I… you… wouldn’t… Kier!” Alistair held out his bare, reddened arm. “Morrigan is refusing to heal me.”

 _June, Ghilan'nain, Fen'Harel_. “Sweet mercy, am I going to have to make you _both_ stand in a corner?” Kier was fairly certain that Morrigan’s grin meant that she didn’t know healing magic. She certainly hadn’t ever used any to help him or Leliana. He pulled a healing poultice from his pack and slopped a generous dollop of elfroot salve over the burn. At Alistair’s yelp, he gentled his grip and soothed the cream into the skin.

“How’s that?” he asked, concentrating on the burn so he wouldn’t be distracted by Alistair leaning so close that his breath stirred the hair at Kier’s temple. Instead, Kier, focused on the shift of muscles, the contrast between wiry golden hair and elfroot-slick skin. Alistair’s arm trembled, a tremble echoed in Kier’s fingers.

He released Alistair as though he’d been the one burned. “Better?”

“Yes. Thank you.” No whinge or sarcasm colored Alistair’s tone, only a quiet earnestness that seemed as steady as bedrock.

Kier cleared his throat and stepped away. “Right. So. Let’s see if we can figure out what this fellow didn’t want us to figure out.”

Ignoring the twin smiles from Morrigan and Leliana, Kier headed for the back room.

***

“So. The village of Haven. In the Frostbacks.”

“Shut up.” Amazing how one could go from wanting to kiss a man to wanting to kill him in the space of a quarter hour. Kier waited until everyone piled out of Genitivi’s house, then closed the door quietly. He wanted to give it a proper slam, but the hour was late, the neighborhood was well-to-do, and they were still fugitives. If Alistair kept this up, though—

“You know what’s on the way to the Frostbacks?” Alistair’s height meant he couldn’t help but smile down on Kier. Didn’t make it less annoying when he did, though.

“Don’t have a map handy, but I’m pretty certain most of Ferelden is.”

Kier wasn’t even angry, really. The information they’d gotten from Genitivi’s notes and the body of the real Weylon would be vital to finding the urn, if it did exist. That was information they’d never have learned if they hadn’t come to Denerim.

Still, did Alistair have to look so damned smug about it?

“Yes,” Alistair drawled, slowing his step to match Kier’s. Da’fen had ranged ahead, snuffling at closed shopfronts, and the women as well, abandoning Kier to his punishment. “Including this lake. Big lake. Huge. You may have herd of it. Named after the first Theirin king.”

Kier pretended to think. “Right… Lake Cod-and-Shad? Cod-and-Haddock? Calf-and-Ham—”

“Calenhad.” A heavy arm draped over Kier’s shoulders as they walked. Comradely. It made his stomach lurch. “And do you know what’s on the south end of Lake Calenhad?”

Kier slipped out from under warm weight of Alistair’s arm. “Fine. I get your point.”

Alistair wasn’t one to let a bit of peevishness get in the way of a good ribbing. He folded his hands behind his back and leaned close, putting his nose at a level with Kier’s. “Say it.”

Golden eyes, golden stubble, and fuck it if the man didn’t smell like honey and grin like a bad idea. Kier shoved his shoulder, and it didn’t so much as budge him. “You’re being really annoying right now.”

“I know. You know what would make me stop?” He leaned closer. Licked his lips. Kier tracked the movement and then couldn’t tear his eyes off them. Pink. And he already knew how warm and soft they’d be. “Say it.”

And how fucking oblivious their owner could be. “Fine!” Kier threw up his hands and backed away several steps, parts grateful and disappointed for Alistair’s one-track teasing. “Redcliffe. We’ll take the south road in the morning and stop there on the way to Kinlock Circle. See if there’s anything else they can tell us.”

“And talk to Eamon. Tell him about Loghain. Get his help.”

Kier shrugged and he resumed his trudge toward the marketplace. “Yes. Obviously.” It seemed fate wasn’t going to let him avoid the nobility forever. “Happy?”

“Incandescent with joy,” Alistair said, falling in at his side again. Kier couldn’t keep from darting a sidelong glance, just as they passed one of the lamps at the market’s border, and fuck him if it didn’t seem like Alistair was shining just a bit. Stupid, gorgeous, glowy, and completely fucking oblivious chantry-boy types.

Kier edged away before he could be trapped under another ‘comradely’ arm. “Good, then I’ll just check in with my family and meet you all back at The Pearl. Don’t wait up.”

“Are you certain it’s wise to go alone?” Alistair reached out for him, but Kier had already sidled out of reach. “The city is—“

“Not the Alienage. It’s my home. I’ll be safe there. And I won’t attract attention like you would.” Nor would he invite unwanted questions from his family like Alistair would. “Go on. I promise not to bring back any strays.”

Not giving Alistair any more chance to protest, Kier slipped down a back way that cut past the more heavily patrolled market square, Alistair’s soft ‘okay’ trailing him through the darkness.

***

Hair concealed by a leather helm so ugly that even Kier couldn’t sweet-talk a merchant into buying it, and face mottled with paste a purple and bilious green that turned his tattoo into a convincing bruise, Kier trudged toward the gate of the Alienage. Late though it might be, it struck him as a little odd that there was no traffic to lose himself amongst. Day workers from the market and the wealthy households would have returned home, and night workers would be at their labors for some hours yet, but there should be someone… and there shouldn’t be a city guard stationed at a closed gate.

“Alienage is closed,” the guard grumbled, rousing from a comfortable slouch and glaring at Kier for disrupting his busy night of standing around.

“But… I’m an elf.” Kier pointed at his ears poking up on either side of the helm’s flaps, then at the Alienage on the other side of the latticework gate. “I live there.”

The guard hocked and spat a gobbet of phlegm at the gate. From the pattern of dried gobbets, Kier suspect his main form of entertainment was distance spitting. “Then that’s quite a bender you been on this past month. Alienage has been closed since the death of the old Arl and his son, by orders of the _new_ Arl.”

No. _Nonononono_. Kier expelled a breath and then couldn’t draw in another, as though the great weight that pressed down on him in his dreams had been summoned into the waking world. No. The whole reason he’d left with Duncan was to protect his family from this. From retribution.

“Can—” He choked on lack of air, somehow managed to suck in a breath through the pressure. “Can you take a message to someone inside?”

Blame his shock for making such a stupid request. All he could think was all the ways a weeks-long quarantine would be bad for the people in the Alienage. Their winter stores would be depleted—how were they getting food? Where was the waste being taken if it wasn’t being collected by the pure-dealers? And water? They had the one well and several cisterns, but it had been a dry spring. What if they ran out?

“Of course,” the guard said with exaggerated amiability. “Let me just put on my courier’s tabard.”

That was all the warning Kier got before a gauntleted fist cracked his head sideways. He reeled and landed on hard cobbles.

“Go find another hutch, rabbit, before I find a spit to roast you on.” The guard grabbed his crotch and took a threatening step toward Kier.

Preservation instincts, more deeply ingrained than Kier’s temper or his status as a Warden, fueled his desperate scramble back. He kept bowing even when he rose from his knees to his feet, kept mumbling apologies long after the guard had turned back to his spitting game and Kier had turned a corner. He fell hard against the Alienage wall, letting it support him until his breathing eased and the tears dried and the throbbing in his cheek receded to a hot, dull ache.

Then came the rage.

It fueled his run to the place where the wall dipped to house height, his climb and his dash across the few intervening rooftops. It almost hurtled him straight into another half-dozen city guards, dicing and grumbling about the chill in the air. A rooftop lean-to of canvas sheltered them from the worst of the damp mists creeping in from Drakon Bay, but the light of their lamps spilled over the narrow path of rooftops and crumbled wall that the Alienage elves had always used to come and go when they wanted to keep secret where they went.

Kier’s fingers dug into the shingles of his own rooftop, nails scraping wood. Trapped. They were trapped, and there was nothing he could do to see them or help them.

He waited until he was back at the alley behind The Pearl to give vent to his helplessness, slamming his fist into a wall again and again and again until everything that hurt went numb and he dropped into a huddled crouch between the water trough and the kitchen stairs.

Alistair found him who knew how long later. Kier didn’t even protest when Alistair pried his fingers free of the bloody blue ribbon at his waist and lifted them to examine them in the scant moonlight.

“You should have Morrigan tend to these,” he said after far longer an examination than Kier’s shredded, bloody knuckles warranted.

Kier released a breath. Later, he’d worry about why Alistair’s touch soothed him more than several rounds with a wall had. “She doesn’t know any healing spells, remember?”

“Right. So she _says_. She might spontaneously ‘learn’ some for your benefit. She likes _you_.”

“And she doesn’t like you? Have you seen the way she sulks when you ignore her taunting?”

Alistair’s expression of horror broke Kier, and he just barely managed to fall on the side of laughter instead of tears. He muffled the sound against Alistair’s shoulder, not pulling away even when a broad, warm hand tentatively stroked his hair.

Once Kier had laughed himself limp, Alistair pulled him to his feet and ushered him up to their shared rooms. Leliana descended on him like a hen with a chick, somehow drawing the story of what happened from him. He leaned against Da’fen and spoke with detachment while Morrigan tended his cuts and bruises with poultices instead of magic.

“Perhaps if unofficial channels do not work, you can make use of official channels,” Leliana said when Kier finished laying out the bare bones of the situation.

That broke his focus from the bandages winding around his hands, but he couldn’t quite meet Leliana’s sympathetic gaze. “What do you mean?”

“The guard captain, Kylon. If anyone could send a message to your family, surely it is him.”

Kier let his head droop again, lank, sweat-greased hair falling into his eyes. It matched his mood. “Ask a shem for help when the Regent _and_ the Arl have it in for me,” he muttered, and took a mean satisfaction from the indrawn breaths of the three shems in the room.

“He didn’t seem to care what you were.” Alistair coughed. “Er, what _we_ are. Wardens, I mean.”

“For once, the dimwitted one makes more sense than you do.” Morrigan tied off the last bandage with enough force to make Kier wince. She met his wounded look with a hard glare. “What was the purpose of doing this man’s job for him, cleaning up the market and the like, unless it was to make use of him when needed?”

“Would it cause any harm to ask?” Alistair set a hand on Kier’s knee. “The worst he can do is say no.”

Oh, there was so much worse that Kylon could do. To Kier, to his family. But Kier didn’t think he could leave Denerim without knowing, and a small chance was better than no chance.

Story of Kier’s life.

“Fine.” He sagged back against Da’fen, didn’t push Alistair’s hand off his leg and hated himself a little for that weakness. “We’ll talk to Kylon in the morning.”

***

It took two days and several more ‘favors’ before Captain Kylon would deliver Kier’s letter. At least the favors gave Kier a chance to beat up some deserving assholes while he waited for Shianni’s reply or Kylon’s betrayal.

In a matter of hours, Kylon came through with the former. Kier waited until they returned to The Pearl to open it, hands trembling so much that he could barely untie the knot holding the parchment closed. Shianni’s letter was written on the hair-side of one of the Alienage quarantine notices, the roughness of the cured follicles making her script seem jagged and rushed.

He hoped it was the parchment, and not fear or pain.

 

_Cousin,_

_You’re alive! I’d thank the Maker if I didn’t know how much that would annoy you. Instead, I’ll thank you, and the companions you mentioned, and this Flemeth woman, and Warden Duncan, and anyone else who had the slightest hand in it. When we heard what happened at Ostagar… we assumed…_

_I have never been so glad to be wrong._

_But now’s the time for me to be right. You must get out of Denerim. Immediately. I don’t know what happened to Arl Kendells, but the new one, Arl Howe, has been sending his men around asking about you as though you’re to blame. In fact, we’ve kept your news secret from most of the Alienage. Elder Valendrian and your father think it’s better if we leave everyone thinking you’re dead. Less likely they’ll be questioned if they really don’t know anything._

_As for the quarantine, I won’t try to convince you that everything’s fine (you’d just think I was lying and do something stupid), but it’s nothing we haven’t dealt with before. Your father suffered when he thought you were gone, but your letter put new fire in him. It’s going to be hard to get him to control his temper around the guards (don’t scoff. Where do you think you get yours from?)_

_Soris and Valora have been a great comfort. At least someone was able to eke a bit of happiness out of this mess. They’re so adorable together, it makes you want to gag. I shared your letter with them. And also—don’t be mad—with Nesiara. The quarantine came down before she was able to return to Highever, so she’s been living with them. I think it helped her a lot, to know you hadn’t died because of what happened on your wedding day. She says to tell you ‘thank you.’_

_I also want to thank you. If you hadn’t… well, if I knew it meant keeping you from being sent to Ostagar to die, I would have let that bastard touch me a thousand times over. Ever since then, I kept thinking… if only, if only, if only. So thank you for not dying. I’d rather be grateful to you for saving me than angry at myself for not stopping you._

_Keep doing that. The not-dying part. You need to come back after the Blight is defeated so that I can kick you in the shin for making me worry so much._

_Love,_

_Shianni_

 

Kier read the letter through several times, letting it settle his breathing, still the trembling in his hands. When he finally lifted his head, the others were all watching him with varying levels of curiosity and concern.

Da’fen broke the silence with a loud _yawn-whine-snap!_

“What does it say?” Alistair asked. “Are they…”

“They’re fine. As fine as can be expected.” Kier rolled the parchment, tied it off, and stuffed it into his pack for later re-reading. He stalled and pretended to fiddle with a buckle. If he looked up now and saw sympathy, he’d break again. He didn’t have time for that anymore. He was supposed to be in charge.

By the time he stood, he’d packed his emotions away as neatly as he’d stashed Shianni’s letter. “Right. There’s nothing more we can do right now. I hear there’s a traitor to expose and a Blight to stop. So, on to Redcliffe.”


	7. Redcliffe

Without Kier to run interference on the road to Redcliffe—he was in no mood to play Elder—everyone else had to sort their shit out or kill each other. They opted for the former. Morrigan and Alistair snarked at each other so much that it prompted Leliana to wonder aloud if they needed a room—which led to a day of blessed silence. Sten spent most of his time with Da’fen and answered questions and requests alike with monosyllables. Not even Leliana could draw him out. Instead of wasting her breath, she told stories. On the road, at night in camp, in the morning when Kier was almost too cranky to listen.

Almost. She told the best stories. Ones he’d heard and ones he hadn’t. Aveline, Shartan, even her stories of Andraste made the Maker’s bride seem more like a person than a prophet. Leliana’s voice echoed in his head for days, _How terrifying it must have been for her, to stand tied to that stake, knowing that the Maker would not stop the pain that was to come. Do you think she hated him then, just a little bit? I think she must have._ Something about the way Leliana spoke of legendary heroes like they were people with fears and regrets and moments of pettiness gave Kier heart and made him hope that maybe they weren’t entirely screwed.

Of course, that left Morrigan and Leliana. Kier couldn’t quite tell if there was a budding friendship there, or if they amiably despised each other.

“Wait, _the_ Flemeth? From the tales?” Leliana blurted one night when Morrigan made a passing reference to her mother. More and more, Morrigan would stay the night in camp—or at least, in a lean-to near the camp—rather than taking to the trees in bird form. Sometimes, she even joined them for meals and deigned to speak to them rather than just snarking. It reminded Kier of taming a wild bird. Just put seed out and pretend not to notice the bird’s cautious approach.

One feather-covered shoulder lifted in a shrug. “So she claims. Mother is sometimes given to exaggeration.” Morrigan snapped the bone of the rabbit thigh she’d been gnawing on and sucked at the marrow. “Save when she is not.”

“And do you believe it?” Leliana asked, turning to Kier and Alistair.

Kier cleaned rabbit grease from under his nails, not quite willing to watch Morrigan’s reaction as he said, “She pulled us out of Ishal when all of Ostagar was flooded with darkspawn. I’d half believe it if she claimed to be Andraste herself.”

Morrigan’s cackle pealed through the clearing where they’d made camp. “Oh, I would pity any man or god who tried to make Mother his bride. Though I think perhaps the Maker deserves her.”

Lips pursed at the casual blasphemy, Leliana poked at the campfire embers. It was late enough that they should probably seek their bedrolls, but somewhere on the road to Redcliffe, they’d started enjoying each other’s company.

Except for Sten, who only seemed to enjoy Da’fen’s company.

“But wait,” Leliana’s frown fell into an open gasp. “Flemeth’s daughters. Does that mean you are one of them?”

“I am _a_ daughter,” Morrigan said slowly, as she tended to do when she wasn’t certain of the motive behind a question. “I have never met any others. If they ever existed, they are long gone. Assuming Mother is as old as she claims.”

“Ooh, but think. You could have so many sisters!” Leliana wrapped her arms around her legs and propped her chin on her knees, grinning at the possibility.

Morrigan did not seem quite so pleased by the concept. “If this is what it is like to have siblings—fighting for the choicest bits of meat and putting up with incessant chatter—I think I am happier without.”

Unfazed by Morrigan’s sharp retort, Leliana turned her smile on Kier. “What of your family? You mentioned your cousins. Do you not have any brothers or sisters?”

The blue ribbon was a silky anchor slipping between Kier’s fingers. “No. Though my cousins—well, mostly Soris and Shianni—we grew up like brothers and sister.” Kier grinned. “Sometimes it was maddening. Soris is cautious, and Shianni likes to nag. Sometimes I wished for blood siblings, but I wouldn’t trade Soris and Shianni for anything.”

Smile softening, Leliana nodded. “And you, Sten?”

“ _Basra Vashedan_ , you people talk nonsense.” Sten let Da’fen take the stick they’d been fighting over, rising and stalking off toward his tent.

Alistair was already rising to his feet when Leliana turned to him. He held up a hand. “No siblings. Raised by dogs. Wild dogs. A whole pack of them. In the Andorfels.”

“That explains the smell,” Morrigan mumbled around her rabbit bone.

Alistair gave her a wan smile. “Yes. I smell like dog. Ha ha. Welcome to Ferelden. Kier, can I have a word in private?”

He left before Kier could answer. Rising and dusting dirt from his ass, Kier touched Leliana’s shoulder in passing. “No father, and his mother died when he was young. You couldn’t have known. Don’t worry. I’ll talk with him.”

Pressing her hands to reddened cheeks, Leliana nodded. Even Morrigan refrained from adding any more color commentary.

Past the camp’s perimeter, there was barely enough light for Kier to see the ground before him. Only Satina was in the sky, a bare sickle on the horizon. Fortunately, Alistair hadn’t gone far. He sat on a fallen log at the edge of the road. The mica in the dirt picked up what little light there was, reflecting it back to the sky like a strip of orphaned starfield.

“Hey.” Kier sat, keeping enough room between them that he could see Alistair’s profile if he looked sideways. “Sorry. I should have stopped her before she got to you. I wasn’t thinking.”

“No, that’s not…” Alistair groaned and dropped his head back, scraping fingers through his hair. “Ugh. I… there’s something I need to tell you. Should have told you already, maybe. But now that we’re approaching Redcliffe, well, I think it’s better you hear it from me.”

“You want to take charge again? Because all you have to do is say the word.” Kier nudged Alistair, shoulder to shoulder, smiling to lighten the mood.

“Maker, no!” Alistair dropped his head and closed his eyes, his mumble so soft that Kier barely caught it. “Though who knows if they’ll give me a choice.”

Kiers own smile dropped. “Who? Choice about what?”

Alistair remained silent for long enough that a nearby cricket forgot their presence and started up a loud solo of chirping. It fell quiet the moment Alistair spoke. “When Leliana was asking us about siblings. I… do have one, actually.” Alistair paused. Grimaced. “Did. It was… uh… Cailan. You know. The King.”

A drumbeat pounding rose in Kier’s ears. His heart. He couldn’t draw breath, could only gape at the shadow beside him, the man he’d thought he’d known. “W-what?”

“When I told you before that I know who my father was, and it wasn’t Eamon? It’s not. Maric was my father.”

The pounding prevented Kier from sorting through the jumble of questions clamoring to tumble forth. He must have asked one of them. At least, Alistair was talking. Then again, Alistair tended to ramble.

“—was true. I’m a bastard. My mother was just a servant in Redcliffe who died when I was born. I never even met my father. Or Cailan, until Ostagar. Arl Eamon—he’s not even really my uncle, but he made certain I was fed and clothed until… his wife, the Arlessa, she believed the rumors. Or maybe she just didn’t like me. Or someone decided that I was too much of a threat to Cailan’s rule. Anyway, they sent me to the Templars to be rid of me.”

Not an arl’s son. So much worse. A king’s son. A chill crept under the heat pounding in Kier’s ears and face. And with it came sense.

He stood—he couldn’t make himself stay seated next to Alistair. A shem noble, however he might deny it. He paced, fingers worrying the ribbon at his waist, the anchor that kept him from bolting. He didn’t have the luxury of panic. Shianni and Soris needed him to remain calm. _I was too much of a threat_.

“So, you’re both heir and spare,” Kier said, stopping and looking down at Alistair.

“What? No! You have to believe me, it never… I was never… it _didn’t matter_. It was made very clear to me that there was no room for me anywhere near the throne. Why do you think they gave me to the Chantry?”

Kier snorted. As impossible as it seemed, he understood the politics of this better than Alistair. Or maybe Alistair didn’t want to understand. His thick head had many uses. “You think it was just chance that Cailan sent _you_ to Ishal, keeping you off the field of battle?” Wait. No. Alistair had understood why he was being sent Ishal. He’d protested to Duncan. Kier rubbed his face, laughing dryly. They’d all known. Send the bastard heir to safety, and just for good measure, send a loyal elven servant with him. Leliana would love it for one of her tales.

“I’m so stupid. You knew. Duncan knew. Cailan knew.” He dropped his hands, looking at Alistair in horror. “Does Loghain know?”

Alistair blinked at the sudden shift. “I don’t see why he wouldn’t. He was Maric’s closest friend and Cailan’s chief advisor.”

“You… you fucking idiot!” Kier balled his hands into fists to keep from whapping Alistair upside that hard head of his. “You let us go to Denerim, knowing this, knowing Loghain knew this—“

“I wanted to go to Redcliffe!” Alistair wailed.

“And if you’d mentioned that you’re the rightful fucking King of fucking Ferelden, we _would_ have. We wouldn’t have gone traipsing into a city where the man who wants the throne has every reason to kill the man with the best claim to it.” Kier was going to hit him. He really was. And when someone chopped off his hands for striking a king, it would still be so worth it.

“I don’t, though,” Alistair said softly. “I’m not. King, that is. I’m just a bastard and a Grey Warden. That’s all I want to be.”

Kier sagged back down onto the log. He didn’t have the energy for this. Didn’t have the first clue how to deal with it. It was too big. Let Arl Eamon and the other nobles deal with the noble shit. No elf ever found anything but sorrow getting caught up in shem politics. “I don’t think you get to choose,” he said, as much to himself as to Alistair.

“You never know.” Alistair gazed wistfully up at the stars. “Maybe I’ll get lucky and die defeating the Archdemon. Then I won’t have to worry about it.”

No man should sound that complacent when contemplating his own demise. Kier realized he was lifting a hand to pat Alistair’s shoulder. He sat on it. He would _not_ comfort Alistair for lying to him. If anything, Alistair deserved to suffer. “We can but hope,” Kier glanced sideways to watch Alistair’s reaction, “my Prince.”

Alistair’s groaned ‘I hate you’ _almost_ brought a smile to Kier’s face.

***

If Kier harbored doubts about Alistair’s claims of being a royal non-entity, they were quickly banished by Bann Teagan’s reception. Arl Eamon’s brother didn’t even recognize Alistair at first, and when Alistair hesitantly made himself known, the Bann’s welcoming smile grew brittle. Forced. He all but ignored Alistair—his nephew, his King!—and aimed all his pleas for aid at Kier.

Afterwards, Alistair smiled self-deprecatingly and brushed it off as nothing of note, leaving Kier to be furious on his behalf.

“At least it’s not darkspawn this time?” Alistair said, following Kier’s stomping charge down the chantry steps. The village green was full of people drilling for the battle to come. A few wielded tarnished weapons. Most of them held farm or work implements. Good enough against the occasional brigand, but Kier doubted a farmer’s leathery skin or a sharpened awl were going to be much use against a horde of undead.

“We are going to stay and help, right?” Alistair asked, giving voice to the question in every village eye turned on them.

Kier glared at the chantry behind them. The red stone seemed to glow in the afternoon sunlight. Only a few hours to prepare, and not much to work with. What the hell had Bann Teagan been doing besides hiding out in the chantry? “Sten, do you think you could do something with… that?” Kier waved at the ragged lines of the militia.

Sten’s violet eyes glittered with cold disdain, but he nodded, grunted, and remained behind to intimidate the cowed militia into fighting shape.

Teagan was alone in not-recognizing Alistair. Redcliffe’s mayor, the blacksmith Owen, several shopkeepers, and even more women had a kind word of welcome or a hair-tousling for the local-lad-turned-warden.

“None of them know?” Kier murmured to Alistair as they followed Morrigan and Leliana back out of the chantry after convincing the holy mother to give her blessing to the knights who would be guarding the approach from the keep.

Alistair glanced around nervously, but the refugees huddled along both sides of the nave paid them little mind, more intent on their own suffering and sorrow.

“As far as anyone knows, I’m the son of one of the keep servants and the ward of the Arl, which is all they should know, because it’s all I am.”

Kier glanced back to the transept, where Bann Teagan pretended to be conferring with the mayor, even as he watched Alistair with a gaze more calculating than welcoming. “I think Bann Teagan knows differently.”

“Now you don’t trust Teagan—“

“Pardon, w-wardens?” the young woman’s whisper cut through theirs. Rather than get into another argument over Alistair’s place in the royal succession, Kier listened intently as the girl pleaded with them to find her brother. Leliana and Alistair agreed to help. Morrigan groused.

That set the tone of the afternoon. Kier, Alistair, and Leliana pledged to do what they could to help whomever asked. Morrigan groused. The blacksmith asked them to find his daughter in the keep, and Morrigan groused. They found the girl’s missing brother, and Morrigan groused. They bullied one of Loghain’s spies into helping the militia, and fucking Morrigan fucking groused. By the time the sun touched the western horizon, Kier was halfway to suggesting they stake her out on the road ahead of the barrels of pitch. Her sour attitude would be twice as effective as burning pitch in warding off the undead.

“Elgar’non, Mythal, Falon’din,” he muttered, going through his mother’s list yet again. He’d recited it a lot recently.

“What was that?” asked Ser Perth, the head of Redcliffe’s paltry contingent of knights.

Kier shook his head. “Just a quick prayer,” he said as a mist, unnaturally green and grim, crawled down the keep road like sludge from Denerim’s river drains.

“Ah. Yes. Maker be with us,” Perth said, lifting one of the holy mother’s blessed tokens to kiss it.

“Maker. Right,” Kier said, and flexed his fingers around the hilts of the daggers Flemeth had given him. The only god he trusted.

***

“Really?” Kier whinged as yet another wave of shambling corpses rose from Lake Calenhad, dripping flesh and Elders knew what else. The lake mud squelched beneath their decayed feet. At least, he hoped it was mud. He was probably wrong. It was probably the remains of the previous waves.

Hard to tell. There’d been a lot of undead through the night.

Hours ago, helping the village had felt like the right thing to do. Now, covered in muck-splatters and gore, arms weak as overcooked rhubarb, and knee twinging every time he put weight on it, Kier found himself regretting every life choice he ever made.

“Shoulda listened to my father,” he muttered, burying a dagger and most of his hand into the pulpy abdomen of the nearest corpse. It was like stabbing into overripe fruit. Once the skin popped, effluvia sludged down his wrist.  “Coulda been a cobbler. Cobblers don’t have to deal with this shit.”

“No, but the feet. Think of all the feet.” Stepping ahead of Kier to block a rusted battle-axe, Alistair gave him a smile too sunny for a night this dark. “Smelly feet that have been in boots all day. With callouses. And corns. And fungus.”

Alistair’s intervention gave Kier time to free his dagger. The hilt had caught a rib on the way out. “I can’t believe feet disgust you more than this.” Kier used his shoulder to smear the worst of the muck off his face, smile rising no matter how much he tried to fight it back. Bantering with Alistair was the only thing keeping him going at this point. If Alistair could find the strength to be ridiculous, then Kier could dredge up the will to keep fighting. At some point in the night, he’d forgotten to resent the man for being royalty. And for lying about it.

“You didn’t spend eight years washing the feet of the penitent whenever you annoyed the Chantry Mother.”

“Oh, but that is why we need cobblers!” Somehow, Leliana managed to keep clean despite hours of fighting. Her hair was a bit mussed, and a few artful spatters decorated her leathers, but she didn’t look like she’d bathed in muddy viscera like the rest of them did. Maybe it was a bard thing? Some form of Orlesian magic? “For shoes! So many shoes to make our feet pretty!”

“The Dalish do not wear shoes.” Morrigan punctuated her observation with a streak of dark energy. One of the nearest undead exploded, taking most of his fellows with him and raining more gore over the rest of them. Except Leliana. It really was magic. “I am surprised that there is a call for cobblers among the city elves.”

“The Dalish don’t have to dodge piles of shit and broken cobbles every time they go outside,” Kier grumbled, picking more muck from his hair. It was a lost cause, but he had to try.

“And think of what they are missing! Shoes!” Leliana chirped. She sidled closer to Kier, fighting back-to-back when several undead surrounded them. “I didn’t know you’d trained as a cobbler. Perhaps when we are back in camp, you might help me. I have the cutest pair of half-boots, but the toes are so pinchy…”

The rest of the night passed much the same. Between waves of corpses, Leliana quizzed Kier on everything he knew about shoes. Alistair interrupted the interrogation with ridiculous suggestions about what sorts of shoes might suit Leliana. Morrigan contributed the occasional mocking comment. Sten only put up with their nonsense for so long before he commandeered Da’fen and they pushed ahead to act as vanguard against the things rising from the lake.

By the time false dawn lightened the sky, the waves had ceased. The knights who’d been defending the road from the keep trudged down to the village chantry to confer with Bann Teagan. Chantry sisters tended to the wounded, while exhausted villagers began dragging the dead into two piles for burning—those lost in the night, and those who’d come down from the keep. More than a few people recognized family and friends in the withered faces of their attackers.

Not wanting to intrude on the double mourning, Kier glanced around the village green for the rest of his companions, but they’d all been dragged off to help or, in the case of Morrigan, gone into hiding. Before someone could commandeer Kier, he slipped away into the deserted village. He’d spotted a rain barrel outside the dry goods store. Be damned if he was going to remain covered in muck a moment longer.

He felt no guilt taking a pitcher, some toweling, and spare clothes from the store. Stripping off his armor, he tossed it aside to brush and oil later. His clothes went into a water-filled bucket to soak. He picked loose the knot securing Shianni’s ribbon to his weapon harness and washed that first, draping it over a wood railing to dry in the morning breezes coming off the lake.

Shivering in only his smalls, he dunked the pitcher in the rain barrel and braced himself. Oh, this was going to suck.

He failed entirely to bite down on his yelp when he dumped the spring-cold water over his head. And then he had to choke back the urge to vomit when the remoistened muck released a new wave of foulness. That overcame any aversion he might have to the cold. He dunked his pitcher again. He had to get this stuff off.

“Kier? Kier!” Alistair rounded the corner just as the second pitcher of rainwater sluiced down Kier’s body, sword drawn and shield ready. Both sword and shield points thunked to the wood-plank walkway when it became clear that there was no enemy beyond cold water. Alistair stared at Kier, eyes wide, cheeks pink.

Kier stared back, at a loss for what to say. Alistair’s gaze flicked lower, just the briefest glance, and his blush washed down to his neck.

“Er… sorry. I heard you… that is, I thought you…” Alistair cleared his throat, and still his words came out strangled. “Er… needed my help.”

It was the cold. It had to be the cold. Or maybe it was the exhaustion from fighting all night, or from being angry at Alistair for the past several days. Whatever the case, panic at being caught when he was vulnerable didn’t engulf Kier. He just… didn’t care.

“It’s fine,” he found himself saying, even as a part of his mind screamed _Shut-up. Stop talking. Bad idea!_ “You look like you could use a rinse-off too. Fair warning. Water’s cold.”

Alistair shifted his weight as though he was going to leave, but then he sighed and propped his sword and shield against the shop front. “Cold might not be a bad thing just now,” he muttered, low enough that Kier almost missed it under the sound of armor being unbuckled and dropping to the ground.

“There’s fresh clothes in the shop.” At Alistair’s frown, Kier snorted. “You really think they’re going to begrudge us some trousers and socks when we just saved their entire village?”

“No, I suppose not.” The door creaked as Alistair pushed his way inside the abandoned shop.

“See if you can find soap. And a scrub brush!” Kier called after him. He hefted up Alistair’s armor and set it outside the splash zone. They’d have to give it a thorough brushing and oiling to keep the leather straps from hardening and the metal plates from rusting. He just hoped their armor didn’t start stinking every time the sun warmed it or sweat got into it.

By the time Alistair emerged, Kier had wiped all the surface muck off his skin and was shivering hard enough to shake loose the rest. He handed the pitcher to Alistair in exchange for a ball of soap. Casual. Easy. Nothing uncomfortable at all about stripping down with his fellow warden to bathe.

Averting his gaze when Alistair stripped away shirt and trews—that was not so easy. Alistair yelped at the first pour of water, and Kier glanced up before he remembered he shouldn’t.

Alistair’s skin—he really was gold all over, not just face and arms—paled from the cold, muscles tense and nipples pricked tight. Water beaded in the hair dusting his chest and trailing down his abdomen and into his smalls. He turned to refill the pitcher before Kier could make a close examination of those wet, clinging smalls. It didn’t help. His back was wide, smooth skin over shifting muscles as the pitcher lifted, rained down water. The water caught the morning light slanting between ramshackle buildings, glanced off him in a shimmer of droplets, coursed down his spine and over the slope of his...

Kier swallowed hard and turned his back to Alistair. He’d never wanted… he was _not_ allowed to think such things about shems. Especially not the shem who was probably his King.

Even if that King did have an ass to make the Maker weep.

By the time Alistair had finished rinsing, Kier was done soaping and more than ready for a dousing of cold water. “Right. Now do me.” He nodded at the pitcher and braced himself, yelped when the stream hit. As quickly as he could, he scrubbed the soap from his hair, swept it from his body. Glared at Alistair when the softest snort escaped.

“Smile now. You’re next.”

If anything, his smile grew. “More to me than there is to you. Cold doesn’t bother me as much.” He slapped his belly, which of course drew Kier’s gaze. Kier forced it away, away from the sight of firm muscles and a line of soft gold hair that he wouldn’t soon forget.

“We’ll see about that,” Kier grumbled. This had been a bad idea. Why in the Void had he suggested it? He snatched the pitcher from Alistair. “Go on. Soap up.”

Kier concentrated on filling the pitcher as though it was more complicated than picking a lock. Better that than watch Alistair digging his fingers into his scalp, running hands down his body. The sounds of soap and skin were enough to inspire Kier’s imagination. He wasn’t certain he could handle the real thing. Wasn’t certain even cold water could dampen his interest in the process.

“Ready,” Alistair said, then, after a short pause, “Do your worst,” in a taunting drawl that went right to Kier’s groin.

Terrible idea.

Kier lifted the pitcher and realized another mistake. Alistair was tall. “Er, you’re going to have to duck. Or kneel.”

That chased the smug grin from Alistair’s face, leaving him looking as gut-slammed as Kier was feeling.

“Er. Right.” Alistair knelt. Fuck. Kier was half-tempted to pour the water over his own head.

Setting a hand on Alistair’s crown—to steady himself. Sure—Kier began to pour. He carded the water through Alistair’s soapy hair, letting the slick strands slip through his fingers. His nails dug into the escaping warmth of Alistair’s scalp, small circles that rasped softly in the descended quiet. Alistair sighed. Kier felt it more than heard it, a stirring of warmth against the bare skin of his belly.

This had to stop. If they kept this up, Alistair was going to get smacked in the chin with proof of Kier’s interest. And that was something Kier was barely willing to admit to himself, much less to the shem who’d stirred it.

He let the trickle of water grow into a cascade, dowsing them both in cold reality.

Alistair yelped and flinched back, falling on his ass. Kier hadn’t even realized he was leaning so close. He forced down a grin when Alistair glared up at him. “That was mean. You’re mean. Morrigan is a bad influence on you.”

“Then you’ll have to be a better good influence,” Kier said, and threw a length of toweling at Alistair’s head. “Get dressed. We’ve still got our armor to clean and a keep to assail.”

***

By noon, they were back in their armor and back at the crossroads leading up to the keep. And Kier was back to wanting to punch someone. This time, it was Bann Teagan for revealing that there was a secret passage to the keep.

“You mean you could have infiltrated the keep at any time in the past week, and you didn’t?” Behind him, Sten emitted a rumble that was very like a growl. If Kier punched Teagan, at least Sten might finally approve.

“I couldn’t abandon the villagers to the attacks.” Teagan’s voice remained level. Even. As though his cowardice was perfectly reasonable, and Kier couldn’t help but think that this was the same man who cowered in the chantry for the ‘protection’ of the ‘villagers’ while the mayor and every other able-bodied man and woman stood against the oncoming darkness.

“Right. Because it’s not like the threat was coming from the keep.” He took a step closer, noting the way Ser Perth’s hand drifted toward his hilt, the way Alistair shifted so he stood between Perth and Kier. “Not like everyone up there is already dead for all we know. I mean, those bodies have to be coming from somewhere.” And in a land that burned its dead like Ferelden did, there was only one obvious source—the freshly dead.

“But sure, wait until some unexpected strangers show up and send them into the keep for you. And if Alistair’s in the group, so much the better for your brother, am I right?”

“Kier.” Alistair laid a hand on his shoulder.

“What does he mean by that?” Leliana’s soft question was to Morrigan, but Teagan heard it.

“Yes, what _do_ you mean by that?” he asked, low and steady.

Kier shrugged off Alistair’s hold. “I mean—“

“Teagan!” The shout from the road stressed the wrong syllables of the Bann’s name. Not like a Ferelden. Like an Orlesian.

“Isolde!”

Kier stepped aside before Teagan could shove him, but it was no longer controlled anger that propelled the Bann. Teagan rushed toward a woman hurtling down the steep road from the keep, catching her when she would have tripped.

She was pretty, or would have been if worry hadn’t worn a permanent furrow in her brow and darkened the skin around her eyes to bruising. Finely dressed, too, for all that mud spattered her shoes and hem, and her pale hair escaped her braids as though she hadn’t tended them for days. The way Teagan held her with such care, looked at her with such relief and anguish, Kier assumed lovers, perhaps husband and wife. Except… Isolde? Wasn’t that…

“Arlessa Isolde,” Alistair said, bowing, no hint of smiles or self-deprecation to be seen.

Ah. So not lovers. Well, maybe not.

“A-Alistair? What are you…” For just a moment, a sneer of disgust lifted Isolde’s voice and lip, as though one of the undead horde still walked with them. But then she shook herself and turned back to Teagan, all ladylike helplessness and distress once more.

“It does not matter. Teagan, you must help. You must come back to the keep with me. It is Connor. He is… not well.”

And just like that, Bann Teagan who had hidden in the chantry for the better part of a week became Bann Teagan who was more than willing to venture into Redcliffe Keep alone.

Kier was half-tempted to leave the two shem nobles to their stupidity, until Morrigan voiced her objection to getting involved. That was enough to make Kier stifle his own irritation.

“Look, I don’t like it either,” he said, mostly for Morrigan and Sten’s benefit, after Teagan had given them the key to the passage and left with Isolde for the keep. “The Arlessa’s story stinks worse than Alistair’s socks—“

“Hey!”

“—and has almost as many holes. But whatever has been causing these attacks is still up there in the keep. As is Arl Eamon. We need to stop the undead, and we need Eamon to stop Loghain. You’re all welcome to stay down in the village. I’m going in.”

“And me,” Alistair roused from his pouting to say.

“Alistair and I are going in.”

“Am I not invited as well?” Leliana could give lessons to them all in pouting.

Kier rubbed his face. “Leliana, Alistair and I are—”

“ _Whuff!_ ” Da’fen’s bark was followed by Sten’s grunt and an almost audible eye-roll from Morrigan.

“Right. I get it. We’re all going in.” Resisting the ridiculous urge to hug the lot of them, Kier headed for the granary housing Teagan’s secret passage. “Let’s go.”

It wasn’t their last argument of the day. There was the blood mage in the dungeon who admitted to poisoning the Arl, but not to summoning the demon possessing Connor. Leliana begged for clemency. Alistair and Sten were on the same side for once in their conviction that the man should die, and Morrigan, with ruthless pragmatism, suggested that he could be useful. There was the demon-controlled guards and Bann Teagan who rose up against them after demon-Connor was flushed from hiding. Kier took two entropic blasts meant for Teagan, snapping at Morrigan to pull her magical punches as his muscles spasmed and twitched hard enough to make him drop his daggers. He was not going to be blamed for the death of another noble. There wasn’t any Duncan to save him if Teagan died.

And then there was the fight over what to do about Connor.

“What the fuck is your problem, lady?” Kier snarled, turning on Morrigan the moment they were alone in the Arl’s study and he didn’t have to pretend to be diplomatic for Isolde or Teagan’s benefit.

“Is it a problem to make sense?” Morrigan asked in an oh-so-reasonable tone that made Kier want to oh-so-reasonably smack her in her oh-so-reasonable face. “The boy is an abomination. If you wish to avoid killing him, then another must pay the price to free him. His mother volunteered. I do not understand your hesitation.”

Alistair raised his hand, smile at odds with the angry flush coloring his cheeks, except for the tightness at the edges and the way it didn’t reach his eyes. “Call me thick, but Isolde _volunteered_ for a ritual involving blood magic. Shouldn’t we maybe hesitate over the blood magic thing? Just as a suggestion.”

“Blood freely given, not taken.” Morrigan gave a one-shouldered shrug and fiddled with the feathers on her staff. “I do not see any ethical dilemma.”

“ _Vashedan_ , you people.” Sten’s fist slammed on the Arl’s desk, making them all jump. “We came up here to cleanse this place. The child is the source of the corruption. He must die. Why do you dither over what must be done?”

Leliana was the first to shake off the weight of Sten’s condemnation. “We cannot simply kill a boy or his mother. Kier, please tell me you are not—“

“Enough! Shut up. All of you.”

Remarkably, the room fell silent. It was a partial blessing. Without the arguments from the others, Kier was left with his own roiling thoughts. He didn’t want to sympathize with these people. Isolde was a bitch who cared more about her son than about all the servants and retainers who’d died because of him. Teagan wasn’t much better, and Kier would lay even odds that Connor was his son and not the Arl’s. Jowan was a maleficar and Loghain’s tool. Kier was half-tempted to consign them all to the Void.

But… Connor was also around the same age that Kier had been when the guard took his mother for theft. Took her for a theft she hadn’t committed. Kier knew the torment of feeling responsible for his mother’s death, even if the ones ultimately to blame were the guards and the shems and the laws that kept elves in poverty and privation.

He was not about to consign another boy to that torment.

“How long to get to Kinloch Circle?” he asked, gripping the back of a chair to steady his resolve.

“Maybe a day if we go across the lake,” Alistair said.

He glanced at Morrigan. “And with enough lyrium we won’t need to use blood?”

She pursed her lips, answered grudgingly, “It should be possible.”

Kier drew a breath. Exhaled. It wasn’t a good option, but it was the best they had. “Morrigan, you’ll stay here and monitor the situation with Connor. You too, Leliana.” He fixed a glare at Morrigan and leveled a finger at Leliana. “If things get out of hand before we return, Leliana makes the call.”

After several tense moments, Morrigan huffed and broke the stare-down. “You are all fools.” Snatching up her staff, she quit the room.

Sten caught the door before it could slam closed. “For once, I agree with the witch.”

“Sten…”

“I will wait for you in the courtyard. I cannot stomach the sink of this place.”

The door shut softly. Kier winced.

Leliana touched his hand, still clenched knuckle-white on the chair back. “I will keep Connor and his mother from coming to harm—“

“You will listen to Morrigan. I don’t want any more deaths, but I’ll take one death in exchange for the lives of the rest of the people here.”

Leliana’s hand jerked away. “Whose death?” she asked, rich voice gone cold and affectless. “Connor’s or Isolde’s?”

He couldn’t make that decision. Why was he the one who had to make such decisions?

 _Blood freely given_. What would it have done to his mother if he’d been the one taken by the guard when she might have saved him?

“Let that be Isolde’s choice,” he said, hating himself for shifting the responsibility, knowing what Isolde would choose.

Leliana nodded once, sharply, and slipped from the room, leaving only Kier and Alistair.

“Thank you,” Alistair said, hovering so close that Kier could feel the warmth of him. He wanted to turn into that warmth, seek comfort from it, but he’d already set a record for bad decisions that day. He didn’t need to compound it.

“For what? Trying to save a woman who clearly despises you? Or a boy who is unwittingly responsible for killing most of the keep and half the town?” Kier snorted and rubbed his face. “Or just, you know, pinning all our hopes on the advice of a blood mage who’s working for Loghain, poisoned the Arl, and might be lying about this ritual just to save his own skin.”

A hand clamped on Kier’s shoulder, turned him, and pulled him into a hug. After a moment’s struggle, Kier gave up and relaxed into it. Bad decisions. He was made of bad decisions.

But as Alistair’s broad hand smoothed down his back, as his breath stirred Kier’s hair, Kier found himself giving in to those as well.

“For being the one to make the call. We’d never stop arguing without you to lead us. We’d never come to a decision, and we all know it.”

Kier squeezed his eyes shut. “Right. Fearless leader. That’s me.”

Alistair held him and wisely said nothing.


	8. Kinloch

“How bad is this Right of Annulment?” Kier asked Alistair while they waited for Knight Commander Greagoir to see them. The journey to Kinloch Circle had gone swiftly enough, but the chaos they discovered on their arrival stymied them. They’d been waiting in the entry hall for hours while every harried templar who tried to help them eventually decided they were someone else’s problem.

At least their central position allowed Kier to pick up on the gossip: what had happened, what was happening…

What was going to happen, unless something changed.

Alistair shuddered. “I’ve never seen it used—I’m not certain the last time it _was_ used—but it’s supposed to be the final solution when a Circle falls to demons.”

Kier gripped the edge of the bench, glancing at the heavy ironwood doors that closed off the rest of the tower. “Final solution?”

“The Right gives the Templars permission to kill everyone in the Tower.”

“Fuck.” He couldn’t let that happen. Not a few months ago when he’d never even met a mage, and certainly not now when all he could think of was Solona tossing a spark between her fingers when she was nervous. Solona, who didn’t even know to kilt up her skirts to avoid brambles and mud because she’d never been outdoors. Solona, who’d told Kier stories of her life in the tower, the pranks they would play, and who was buggering whom. And her friends in the tower – cat-obsessed Anders and arachnophobic Leorah, Senior Enchanter Wynne, who liked a good wine almost as much as she liked a good aphorism.

“Not if the Wardens have anything to say about it.” Kier stood, determined to find this Greagoir and put an end to this nonsense.

Convenient, that the Knight Commander seemed to have decided the same thing and was striding across the hall toward them. He was a large man, made larger by his carapace of templar plate. Kier was reminded of the Denerim captain who almost took him for Kendall’s murder. Of Loghain’s intimidating aura. He clutched his blue ribbon and reminded himself that he was a Grey Warden. He had authority here.

“Wardens. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, but as you can see, the tower doesn’t have any people to spare to fight the Blight.”

“Of course you don’t. What about people to send into the tower? These demons and abominations aren’t indestructible.” He shot a quick glance at Alistair – _are they?_ – and got a headshake in response. “There might be people alive in there. Don’t you owe it to them to try to get them out?”

Not even Greagoir’s beard could hide the depth of his frown. “I don’t tell you how to deal with darkspawn, Warden. Don’t tell me how to deal with demons. Anyone in there who might be untainted soon won’t be. I won’t risk losing more men to a foolish hope.”

“Then we’ll take the risk,” Kier said. Well, what good was being in charge if you couldn’t throw your people’s lives away without consulting them?

“And we will seal the door behind you. If you somehow manage to survive, then you will be destroyed when we receive the Right of Annulment.”

So much for diplomacy. Kier bit down a dozen curses. “Void take it, man,” he snapped. “Don’t you even care that those are your people in there? People you swore to protect? At least let us bring out any survivors we find!”

Greagoir was iron, from the color of his beard to the stiffness of his posture to the immovable glint in his eyes. “Any survivors might carry an abomination. I won’t risk letting that loose. Unless…”

Kier jumped on the weak point. “Unless?”

Sighing, Greagoir passed a hand over his face. Gone was the intractable soldier who would murder a tower full of helpless people; left behind was a man haunted by exhaustion, _devastation_ , as though he’d lost something more precious to him than a hundred lives.

“I-Irving.” His voice broke on the name. He cleared his throat and straightened his shoulders. “First Enchanter Irving. If _he_ stands before me and swears to me that the tower and all within are free of demons, then I will open the doors.”

“Irving. Right. Done.” So, Solona’s suspicions about the Knight-Commander and the First Enchanter were true. Fine. Kier would take what he could get. He jerked his chin at Alistair and Sten. “Let’s go.”

Greagoir led them to the towering ironwood doors and nodded at the men standing guard to open them. A few of the milling templars tensed like dogs before a race, as though they’d like nothing more than to disobey orders and join Kier’s team, but most of the templars shied back, refusing to watch someone else do what they should be doing.

“And you suck, and you suck, and you suck,” Kier muttered under his breath as he strode past them and through the narrow opening, followed by his team. The closing of those doors echoed down the long, empty corridor before them. An eerie silence descended. No screams or howls. No clank or clamor of templars running back and forth. Just the creak of Alistair’s scale as he shifted, and a low whine from Da’fen.

“This is why we cut out the tongues of mages in Par Vollen.”

Kier jumped at the growl and glared up at Sten. “You finally decide to get chatty about your home, and _that’s_ what you lead with?”

Sten’s response was no response. Kier broke gazes first. Nobody ever won a staring contest with a wall. “Let’s never visit Par Vollen,” he muttered to Alistair.

“Elves are welcome in the Qun,” Sten said, striding past them. Then, over his shoulder: “I suppose there is a place for fools as well.”

Kier and Alistair both gaped at Sten’s back.

“That… was a joke,” Kier marveled.

“That was a joke about _me_ ,” Alistair whinged.

Kier patted his shoulder and followed after Sten. “I suppose Morrigan is a bad influence on us all.”

“I hate that woman,” Alistair said, trailing Kier. “Hey, can we send _her_ to Par Vollen?”

***

The eerie quiet of the lower tower discouraged even Alistair from making jokes. They searched a few dormitories off the main corridor – doors flung open, sometimes hanging off their hinges, beds toppled, and bedding shredded. The grey flagstoned floors were streaked black with soot, sometimes blood, and gouged with claw marks.

But of people, they found nothing. No demons or abominations, either.

“Not that I’m complaining about the lack of ambushes,” Kier said when they emerged from yet another destroyed but empty dormitory. Even his whisper seemed to fill the giant, curving corridor. “But it’s hard on the back, expecting a dagger that never—“

A roar shook the air, silencing Kier.

“You just had to say something,” Alistair said, and charged in the direction of the noise with his shield at the ready.

Sten gave Kier a glare. “The fool is right. This is your fault,” he said, and followed.

Even Da’fen gave Kier a _look_ before loping after Sten.

“Yeah, that’s fair,” Kier said, taking off after them.

The growls and dancing shadows on the corridor walls were poor warning for the monstrosity rearing above them when they rounded the curve – a creature of pure flame, surrounded by living smoke and shadow. Kier squinted against the brightness and raised an arm to shield his face from the heat. The minor irritations that he’d been ignoring – his tight shoulders, his knee still aching from the Redcliff fight, the blister between his toes from ill-fitting boots – all flared to infuriating proportions. And the larger concerns over his family’s safety, Loghain’s treason, and Alistair’s lie choked him, a smoldering anger worse than any fire.

And Kendalls. Jonally, their hands on him, probing and pinching, their leers and laughter. The city guard coming for him, Duncan conscripting him, all because an elf wasn’t allowed to fight off rapists. The fire and fury of helplessness burned, a coal Kier was forced to swallow every. Fucking. _Day!_

Kier snarled, sweaty grip tightening around his daggers, looking for something – _anything_ – to vent his rage on. Blood was the only thing that would quench it.

Before he could sink his blades into that fucking shem noble’s back, two slender shadows interposed themselves between Kier and the burning demon. Sleet shot from one of them, coating the creature in a thick casing of ice. Lightning crackled around the other shadow, streaking out in a white-bright bolt that shattered the frozen flames.

Quiet descended, and the darkness that came after snuffing a lamp. As quickly as it had flared, Kier’s rage cooled, as though the ice had touched him. He gaped at an oblivious Alistair in horror. He’d almost… he’d been about to…

Kier stumbled back and sheathed his daggers.

“That was a demon.” Alistair’s voice was rough, shaky.

Kier nodded. “Yeah. Got that.”

“No, I mean… that was a _demon_. They shouldn’t be able to leave the Fade unless they’ve been summoned by a maleficar.”

“They were summoned,” a woman said, one of the shadows who’d fought off the demon.

Kier blinked, fighting to make his eyes adjust. She was older, only a hint of blonde in her silver hair, but with a face remarkably smooth of wrinkles, and pale as though she saw the sun but rarely. Behind her, a group of people, mostly children, huddled against the wall. They clung to each other and watched Kier and his companions warily. All of them wore robes like the silver-haired woman.

“You’re a mage,” he blurted.

The woman smiled, somewhere between wry and gentle. “What gave it away, the robes or the phenomenal cosmic power?”

That startled an answering grin out of Kier. There was something about her, like he knew her from somewhere, except that couldn’t be. He’d met his first mage at Ostagar, and this wasn’t her. “Thank you. For killing it. I… the way it made me feel… Thank you.” He turned to the other mage, and his thanks caught in his throat.

“Kier?” she said.

Kier gaped. First demons, and now ghosts. “Solona?”

“You… you’re…” her eyes filled with tears, gaze fixing on something beyond Kier. “Alistair?” She covered her mouth to catch a sob.

Kier swayed where he stood, light-headed. “How… how are you—”

He was silenced by the surprising strength of Solona’s embrace. Wrapping his arms around her, he breathed the rest of his words into her shoulder. “You’re alive. You’re _alive_.” Moments later, they were both engulfed by Alistair’s arms. For once, Kier didn’t struggle, didn’t feel trapped. He could sense them, a cozy hum of comfort on either side. Safety, like the blankets from his bed at home or his mother’s hand in his hair. And yet… strong. He felt stronger with them.

The older mage’s voice intruded on their reunion. “I suppose it is a relief that there’s more than one Grey Warden left in Ferelden, but right now I think demons are a greater threat than darkspawn.”

They broke apart, and Kier wasn’t the only one wiping tears from his cheeks. “Right. Sorry. Only…” he looked at Solona again. Except for a few strands of hair escaping her bun and a streak of ash across her cheek, she looked unharmed. As though Ostagar had never happened. “ _How_ are you alive?”

She gave him a tiny smile, touched his shoulder and smoothed her hands down his arms as though to reassure herself that he was also alive. “Wynne.” Her smile transferred to the older mage, then back to Kier. “You know I was assigned to fight with the mages at the rear of the King’s vanguard? When the beacon was lit, she withdrew us to the rise for a better vantage for when the hammer struck the anvil. You know.” She raised her hands and let a few sparks shoot back and forth between them. “Death from above.”

“Our position was fortunate, not good planning on my part,” Wynne murmured, waving away credit. “When darkspawn flooded the valley, and no Loghain came to crush them, we were able to turn the road into a choke point, make a fighting retreat. Just the mages and a few squads of soldiers who had been out in the wilds, scouting.

“So, the beacon _was_ lit in time,” Alistair said, trading a look with Kier.

Solona nodded. “But you… how… the Wardens were down in the field. At the front with the King. How did _you_ survive? Did… did anyone else?”

“We weren’t on the field.” Alistair’s grim tone made Solona flinch.

Kier caught her hand and squeezed. “We were sent to light the Beacon, but the tower was full of darkspawn. We had to fight our way through. We worried that… there was always the possibility that everything went sour because we didn’t light it in time. That the battle was lost because of us.”

Wynne hmphed. “The battle was lost because Teyrn Loghain is a traitor. The signal was clear and timely, and yet he withdrew and his king fell. And now the tower might also fall because of him.”

Tensing, Alistair said, “Loghain is behind this?”

Wynne held up a hand and glanced over to a pair of teens who stood with the children. “Petra, Kinnon, take the children into the oratory. It will be safest in there.”

The girl—Petra—nodded, giving Kier, Alistair, and especially Sten, a wary look. “Yes, Wynne. Are you certain you’ll be okay? That fight earlier…”

“I’m fine.”

Kier had been so relieved to see Solona alive that he hadn’t considered their location. Darkspawn, he could sense. Demons, not so much.

“Sten, keep watch on the hall.” Kier waved at the archway leading deeper into the tower. A shimmering soap-bubble barrier covered it, but Kier didn’t trust that. The fire demon had popped through. Who knew what else might?

Sten emitted what might almost have been a sigh and, giving Wynne and Solona a wide berth, tugged on Da’fen’s collar and went to stand guard.

Kier, Alistair, even Solona, listened quietly through Wynne’s story—her return from Ostagar; the discovery that her fellow senior enchanter, Uldred, had already begun to spread Loghain’s lie; Uldred’s promise that, under Loghain, the mages would have more freedom; Wynne’s report to Irving; the tribunal Irving called to confront Uldred with the truth.

And then… screams. Demons and abominations flooding through the tower. Chaos and confusion.

Kier capped Wynne’s tale the news that Greagoir intended to use the Right of Annulment.

“Where is Irving now?” Kier asked when Wynne and Solona didn’t seem to be able to speak for the horror. “Greagoir will only spare the mages on his word.”

Wynne’s knuckles whitened around her staff. She shook herself, something hard creeping into her soft features. “The last I saw, he was headed for the Harrowing chamber. He told me to get the others—the children—to safety.” She ducked her head, rubbing her brow. “I should have gone with him.”

“We wouldn’t be here if you had.” Solona curled an arm around Wynne’s shoulders. Her eyes met Kier’s. “She held off an entire wave of demons, but it took a lot out of her.”

“I’m fine—”

“You dropped so suddenly, we all thought you had…” Solona’s lips pursed on whatever she’d been about to say. “I’ll take Kier and Alistair to the chamber. You should stay here. You need to rest.”

“Don’t coddle me,” Wynne snapped, shrugging off Solona’s arm. “I still have one foot inside the land of the living, and I still outrank you. You stay. I will go.”

“And _I’m_ a Grey Warden now, not a Circle mage. I stay or go on Kier’s order, not yours.”

Kier let the two women have their gaze-locked battle of wills. Later, he’d ask Solona how she knew that Alistair had ceded authority to him.

Wynne sagged, looking as weakened as Solona claimed. “Very well. We will both go. I’ll be better for healing if you take point on offensive magics.”

“You’re a healer?” Alistair perked up like a dog offered a walk. At Wynne’s wary nod, he broke into a wide grin that infected them all with its cheer. “Wynne, you have just become my favorite person ever.”

***

They all had reason to appreciate Wynne as they ventured further up the tower. The quiet of those first dormitories gave way to a succession of horror chambers—dead mages, _undead_ mages, and mages who had turned to blood magic to save themselves from their former friends.

And for every one they took down, Solona would whisper names and wipe away tears until eventually Wynne softly but firmly told her to stop.

“So many,” she whispered, looking around a scriptorium of scattered books and scorched bodies.

“Not enough,” Sten growled, earning a glare from everyone else. Kier caught Solona’s hand before she could shove a bolt of electricity up Sten’s… qun.

“Someone has to have survived,” he said, squeezing her hand. He couldn’t imagine walking through Denerim’s alienage and seeing everyone he’d grown up with dead or desecrated. “We’ll find them.”

They did find one, a mage so terrified he refused to come out of the wardrobe where he’d hidden, and another, a Tranquil mage whose lack of affect in the face of the slaughter was almost as disturbing as the slaughter itself. But they also had to kill a templar given over to a desire demon, and somehow that failure weighted more heavily than all the risen corpses and crazy blood mages.

Their steps were leaden, shoulders bowed, as they trudged through the templar quarters. Sten’s axe threatened to scrape the flagstones as though even he lacked the heart to lift it. Kier couldn’t make out the words he was muttering—Qunlat, he supposed—but it had the droning, even cadence of a well-worn prayer.

“Dirthamen, Andruil, Sylaise.” Kier quietly cycled through his own mantra, trusting in his mother’s gods even though he knew little of them beyond their names.

Even that mantra stuttered into silence as a wave of exhaustion rolled over Kier. He could barely lift his feet, barely grip his daggers. How long had he been going without rest, without time to heal from everything he’d seen or mourn what he’d lost? Redcliffe, Denerim, Lothering, Ostagar, the alienage and his interrupted wedding. It felt like a lifetime since he’d slept without fear or sorrow.

“Demon.” Wynne’s warning broke through Kier’s lethargy. He raised his head—hadn’t even realized his chin had sunk to his chest. They were in another of the circular chambers at the heart of the tower. Another profane sculpture of blood and twisted flesh, wooden spars and red lashings, rose up in the center of the room.

And rising before it, a figure that managed to tower and slump at the same time, as though even manifesting to torment them was just so… much… _effort_.

Kier shook himself as the tide of lethargy threatened to drag him under. This wasn’t like the fire demons, where he struggled to contain and direct his fury. This was enervation so powerful that he wondered what was the point of struggling at all.

“Sloth,” Solona murmured before falling to her knees and slumping onto the blood-sticky floor. A clatter followed—Sten’s axe? Alistair’s shield? Kier couldn’t keep his eyes open to check. And why bother? They were all dead.

Kier slumped alongside Alistair. At least, in death, he’d finally find a moment of peace.

***

“Wake up, cousin! It’s your big day.” Shianni’s too-chipper voice shredded Kier’s dream, the ribbon remnants slipping away before he could grasp them. He sat up, groaned and shielded his eyes at the bright light streaming in from somewhere beyond Shianni. It blurred her face, cast her in shadow. All he could see was the flash of her sharp smile.

Shianni always took a certain sadistic pleasure in waking him after a long night. “Go away,” he grumbled. “Sleeping.”

“You can sleep for the rest of your life.” Shianni pulled on his covers. They slipped out of his slack grip like the remnants of his dream. “Today, you’re getting married.”

Married. Kier allowed Shianni to bully him out of bed and into wedding clothes that were so comfortable he was tempted to crawl right back under the covers. She braided his hair, chattering about things he already knew—Nesiara come early from Highever, Soris’ bashful interest in Valora. Only when Shianni finished and pushed him toward the door did Kier resist.

“No ribbon?” he asked, tugging on the end of his braid, where there was no flash of blue weaving between the red of his hair.

“There’s plenty of ribbon outside. Let’s go!”

Kier went. His conversations with the guests passed in a blur, like he was sleepwalking through them. He only woke to full consciousness when he came face-to-face with Nesiara.

“So…”

“… yes?” Nesiara’s smile faltered as she waited for Kier to piece more than two words together. Eventually, she took pity on him. “It’s a nice day for a wedding.”

“Yes.” Except that it was so warm, Kier just wanted to find a shady spot and sleep in the sun. Maybe after they were wed, he and Nesiara could do that.

“That sounds nice,” Nesiara said, taking his hand, which… had he spoken the thought aloud?

Nesiara smiled. He shook his head. Silly thought. He must have.

“I’m so pleased our Elders arranged this. I think we’ll have a long, peaceful, happy life together. Don’t you? Doesn’t that sound nice?”

“Yes?” Kier shook his head again. Some lazy afternoon insect kept buzzing too close to his ears, making them twitch, making him restless. He was almost grateful for the interruption of a squad of shem guards marching into the green. This was what life in the alienage was like—brutal and cruel, not warm and soft and idyllic. He knew what came next. He almost welcomed it.

Setting Nesiara behind him, Kier leaned over to whisper in Shianni’s ear, “It’s Vaughan Kendalls looking to make trouble. Take the brides and bridesmaids inside before he sees you. I’ll handle him.” He touched his daggers, glad he’d worn his armor and weapon harness to his wedding.

Wait. Had he?

Before he could wonder at that, Shianni laughed. “Don’t be silly. It’s just your friend. You know, the king.”

Kier gaped at her, then turned and gaped some more at the golden man emerging from the center of an honor guard. For a moment, all he saw were the symbols of a king—the gold washed plate, the crown, the aura of authority that caused the wedding guests to part for him. The man wearing those symbols could be anyone—Maric. Cailan. Loghain—but then he stood before Kier, smile as warm and sweet as honey.

“I hear congratulations are in order,” King Alistair said. He grasped Kier’s shoulders, pulling him close.

“What are you doing here?” The longer Kier stared up at Alistair, the more the man’s brightness outshone everything else. The wedding guests, Nesiara, Shianni, they all faded into the background.

“Can’t I come to congratulate my closest friend and advisor? Nothing, not even marriage, could come between what we have.”

What they had? But… Kier hadn’t met Alistair until after Vaughan Kendalls had interrupted his wedding. “You mean… the Blight!” How the Void had he forgotten that? “We have to stop it!”

Alistair held him when he would have bolted. “We did! And we defeated Loghain. And now that I’m King, we can make everything better for the people of Ferelden—humans _and_ elves.” He pulled Kier closer until they were standing chest-to-chest, almost an embrace. Looking away was like looking away from the sun, but Kier managed it. He searched for Nesiara, for Shianni. They stood together, beaming, as though there was nothing odd about Kier embracing a shem King in the middle of the alienage, in the middle of his own wedding.

_Shianni would mock herself into an early death if she knew how I felt about him._

Kier wrenched himself out of Alistair’s embrace. “This doesn’t make sense. I didn’t meet you until after I killed Vaughan Kendalls. That was why I was recruited.”

“And then you defeated the Blight and came back to me,” Nesiara said, pressing up against his side.

He stared into her color-shifting eyes. He’d known her for so little time, he couldn’t recall what their proper color was. “No, I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t marry you when I…” Darting a glance to Alistair, Kier swallowed the rest of what he feared was the truth.

 _Elgar'nan, Mythal, Falon'Din._ He tugged on his braid, looking for something that should have been there and wasn’t. A ribbon. Shianni’s blue ribbon. When had he lost it? He looked down and saw it fluttering in the breeze, still tied to his weapon harness. His wrist knocked the hilt of one of the daggers that Flemeth had given him, ready for a swift draw. Why was nobody in the alienage or any of the King’s guards raising a fuss that Kier was armed as no elf should be, and wearing armor instead of his wedding clothes?

He ran his fingers over the ribbon, pulling out memories as he tugged it. The demon. The Fade. Wynne’s warning.

“This isn’t real,” Kier said, drawing his daggers.

Nesiara smile faded. “I try to give you what you lost, a quiet life, safe with your family, and still you fight?” All around them, his family and loved ones twisted into grotesque parodies of themselves. “You blame the shems, but you’re the one who destroyed this. You’re the one who refused to relent.”

Her face shifted, and it was Vaughan Kendalls sneering at him, belt unbuckled and lower lip wet with spit. He ran a thumb across it, an echo of the way he’d touched Kier. “You’re the one who couldn’t stop fighting. If you’d just stop fighting, I could make it good for you.”

Fear and fury chased away the last of Kier’s lethargy. His heart raced with it. “You picked the wrong face to wear if that’s what you wanted, demon.”

“Oh, I think I’ll be taking what I want from you soon enough, little rabbit.”

“You think. _I_ think I am going to enjoy the fuck out of killing you again,” Kier snarled, and the fight was on.

***

“At least I’m not a fucking rabbit,” Kier muttered—squeaked?—to himself as he skittered along another passage too small for an elf to crawl through. The Fade was strange, its landscape twisted and disjointed, but he was starting to make sense of its logic. He could take the fear, reign it into caution, and somehow that made him a mouse, small and stealthy enough to sneak around. Rage flared into passion, and he could walk through flames that didn’t burn as hot as he did. Obstinacy became conviction, which let him batter through the thickest doors. And when there was no way forward, he need only remember that nothing in the Fade was what it seemed—not the walls or the ground. Even his body was elsewhere; only his spirit remained, able to ghost through the Fade as though the only thing that separated him from the rest was self-awareness.

“Let’s see if that did anything,” he said after he’d killed another of the demons locking him into Sloth’s trap. Speaking aloud, if only to himself, helped anchor him as he ghosted over to a nearby floating island that had appeared on the demon’s death.

“Wynne?” Kier said softly. The older woman stood on the main shelf of the island, surrounded by children from the barely-standing to the almost-bearded. All of them wore mage robes. They weren’t any of the children Kier had seen in the oratory, but at least a few he recognized from the scattering of dead bodies they’d seen as they passed through the dormitories.

“Once you’ve properly completed this exercise,” Wynne said to her assembled apprentices, “we’ll move on to defensive magics that will help you ward off demons.”

“But it’s so nice out, Wynne.” Only one child’s lips moved, but its voice rang with the eerie echo of many voices. “Can’t we go out and play?”

“Oh, very well. I suppose it won’t hurt this once.” Wynne waved them off and sat on something that flickered between chair and rock, watching them play with a tired but indulgent smile.

“Oh, Wynne,” Kier whispered as he recognized the torment Sloth had designed for Wynne. Fuck demons. Fuck the Fade. Fuck having to be the one to force Wynne to see the truth – these children were already dead, already beyond saving.

Reluctant to just attack the demon-children—what if Wynne was tricked into thinking Kier was the monster?—Kier sidestepped a pair that were swinging each other in a circle and giggling. Only the blur at their edges marked them as anything but children with too much energy given unexpected freedom.

“Wynne?”

“Ah, it’s you.” She turned her tired smile on him. “Was I ever that young? Even watching them go is exhausting. I think I need a nap.”

Kier suspected it would be a pretty bad idea to dream of sleeping in Sloth’s realm. He sat beside her, bumping shoulders. “And here you were so quick to remind Solona how spry you are.”

That put some fire in Wynne’s eyes. Her posture stiffened and her lips pursed. “Oh, not you too. The only time I feel old is when you obnoxious young people make smart comments.” She searched the flickering crowd of running, shrieking children. “Speaking of, where is that girl? She should be helping me watch over these apprentices.”

It was a small crack, but Kier wasn’t willing to wait for better. The mass of semi-formed children unnerved him. “That’s a good question. When did you see her last?”

“It was…” Wynne’s brow furrowed. “Why are you asking me this? You were there. In the tower. We were…”

“Yes. Go on. Why was I there? What was a Grey Warden doing in the Kinloch Circle?”

“You came to recruit Solona… no…” Confusion clouded Wynne’s face. She batted it away with an impatient flick of her hand. “Bah, why are you distracting me? As if it isn’t exhausting enough keeping track of this lot.”

Lost her. Dammit. Kier grit his teeth and tried again. “Why are you watching them? Why not another mage? Where _are_ the other mages?”

“Ugh. Irving called a meeting to deal with Uldred. He asked me to take care of the children.”

Kier leapt on that. “He told you to do that after the meeting was over. After Uldred attacked everyone with blood magic.”

Wynne’s gaze darted back and forth—not watching the children, but searching her own memory. “Yes. Yes. And then Solona and I brought them—”

“Not all of them,” Kier said. He pointed at one of the more solid shapes, a child Wynne had nearly stumbled over in a dark dormitory corner. “Not that one.”

“No.” The hollowness in Wynne’s tone, the way her voice cracked on that single word—it wasn’t agreement he’d wrung from her. It was denial of the greater truth. “No… I… I couldn’t find them all. They were hiding…”

“Wynne! Come play! Come find us!” cried one voice, or perhaps all of them.

“I… I have to find them.”

Kier caught her sleeve before she could step back into Sloth’s trap. “No, Wynne. They’re dead. This is the Fade. You have to come with me. We need to find Solona and the others.”

For a moment, he feared she might tear away from his grip, but then she closed her eyes, nodded, and stepped close to his side. She clutched his arm for support. “Yes. Yes, let us leave this place.”

Of course, Sloth wasn’t going to let them go so easily. The mass of children blocked their exit. “You can’t leave us. We need you.”

Kier had had enough. “You aren’t even—”

Wynne’s tightening grip cut him off. Sorrow serrated her voice. “There is no point in arguing with demons.”

Right. Kier pulled his arm free and struck at them with daggers instead.

***

Somehow, Kier lost Wynne in the battle against the child-demons. She’d been at his side against their common foe. When he turned to her after the last demon was killed, she was already fading from view. He searched the entire floating island, calling her name, but there was no response.

Of course a fight against a demon called Sloth would be a long, frustrating slog designed to make you want to give up.

“Wynne?” His call hit the air like a stone in a pond, echoing back to him in ripples of sound. He crossed to another island and was about to call again when he heard voices muttering in a guttural language.

“Great, more demons.” Drawing his daggers, he skulked toward the voices. He stopped on the edge of a clearing, gaping at the inhabitants. Unexpected, yes. Demons, no.

Two grumbling qunari crouched by a fire. Kier didn’t have to know their language to guess what they were grumbling about. There was something universal about soldiers out in the field too long, complaining about their deployment and missing the small comforts of home. He’d heard it the entire time he was at Ostagar. Qunari, it seemed, were no different.

They didn’t seem to notice Kier’s approach, but a third qunari stepped in Kier’s path, fixing him in place with a violet gaze. Sten, keeping watch just as he did whenever Kier and his companions camped for the night.

“Good. You are here,” he said. “Let us leave this place.”

“Uh.” Kier one-handed both daggers so he could wipe sweat from his palms. He hadn’t wanted to fight Sten, but he was surprised that he might not have to. “This isn’t real.”

“I know. I remember when darkspawn tore their heads from their bodies.”

“Then why are you still here? Why haven’t you tried to leave?”

Sten’s gaze lowered, just a flick of movement, but it shook Kier like he was watching the walls of Denerim crumble. “It is a dream, but it is a good dream. I watched them die. I have no wish to kill them again. And…”

Kier would have bet good coin that nothing could crack Sten’s stone façade, but in that moment, he looked so brittle, like all it would take would be a few wrong words.

Words like ‘You miss this,’ maybe.

“Let’s move,” Kier said.

Sten grunted, and the brittle moment passed. “I am leaving,” he told the demons disguised as his comrades.

They exchanged a look and stood, drawing their weapons. “Good luck with that, _Kabethari._ ”

Kier sighed. So much for getting out of fighting qunari.

***

Losing a kindly, middle-aged mage to the Fade was one thing, but how in the Void had Kier managed to lose a mountain of a qunari like Sten? Yet when the fight was over with the demon-qunari, he once again found himself alone on an empty island.

He gave up looking after only a cursory search. This was just another of Sloth’s games. Kier only hoped that Sten and Wynne’s disappearances meant they’d won free of the Fade and were back in Kinloch tower.

“And that I can find the others,” he muttered to himself as he spirit-slipped to another floating island. The terrain around him took on the hazy shape of a massive fortification, crumbling grey stone and open to the sky like the ruins at Ostagar, yet instead of the King’s banners, the walls were draped with the silver-and-black of the Grey Wardens. Unformed figures in bluesteel chain hurried up and down the long transept, giving the empty ruin the aura of bustling activity. At the far end of the hall stood two figures more solid than the flitting ghosts: Solona in blue-grey armored robes. And Duncan.

Kier’s step hitched, almost sending him sprawling before he caught his balance. Duncan’s voice—or rather, the demon speaking in Duncan’s voice—carried down the hall.

“—will become the guardians of history, guiding future generations with wisdom from our fortress here at Weisshaupt.”

“So, your big temptation play is to trap me forever in another version of the Circle?” Solona’s question dripped with equal parts disgust and impatience. She swung her staff, slammed the base on the flagstones, and shot a phosphor-white bolt at the Warden Commander. “My harrowing was harder than this. Now stop wearing his face. It’s not going to stop me from killing you.”

“Solona, behind you!” Rather than wait for her to react, Kier launched himself at the no-longer-hazy warden shapes crowding around her. He caught one in the chest and used his hilt-deep dagger like a lever to swing it into two more. All three crashed to the spongy turf, false bodies shredding away and leaving black, branch-thin creatures in their place.

He backed up against Solona so she couldn’t be surrounded again.

“Real or spirit?” she asked, more lightning sheeting out from her fingers and staff to batter against Duncan. The wisps that had worked free of Kier’s braid crackled around his head in response to the energy. Solona’s too, giving them both the look of demented dandelions.

“Aw.” He wrinkled his nose at her. “Don’t you know that I’m a desire demon come to fulfil your darkest fantasies?” The revealed demons charged again, and he had to meet them face-on. Andraste’s flaming knickers, he missed Alistair. So much easier to kill a thing when it was too distracted to pay attention to you.

“Ha!” Solona fried the false-Duncan into a greasy smear and a wisp of aether. “Guess that means you must be real. If you were a desire demon, there’d be more Alistair and less shirt.” She copied Kier’s nose-wrinkle when he shot her a startled look. “Oh, like you aren’t constantly thinking the same. I’ve seen those looks. Watch it!”

Another demon went down in a blazing blue crackle before it could claw Kier’s face off. Kier gutted the last one almost by reflex, still scrambling for the words to deny Solona’s teasing.

“That… I… what looks?”

“Uh-huh. Riiiight.” Solona’s brow furrowed as she began to fade like Wynne and Sten had. “Guess we’ll have to continue this later. See you on the other—”

And once again, Kier was left alone in the remnants of someone else’s dream.

***

“Alistair?” Kier tentatively called when he finally stumbled across his fellow Grey Warden on another floating island. Solona’s jest hit harder than Kier might have liked, and he was wary that it might be a desire demon’s ruse.

Still, this was probably the real thing before him. Kier’s fantasies weren’t the sort to include a gaggle of blurry children clinging to Alistair’s arms and legs, nor a friendly woman who bore a surprising resemblance to Arlessa Isolde.

“You’re here!” Rather than shake himself free of his human shackles, Alistair dragged them along in his wake. “You’re just in time for dinner. Goldana’s making my favorite.”

“Goldana?” Kier glanced at the demon who’d ensnared Alistair—pretty, blonde, _human_ —and tried to tell himself it wasn’t jealousy that made him want to kill her extra hard.

“My sister.” Alistair tugged Kier toward the woman. “Say you’ll stay. Goldana’s a great cook.”

Sister. Not lover, current or former. Of course Alistair’s desire would be for family. It even explained why she resembled Isolde. Kier had seen Alistair’s sadness in just the half-day they’d been at Redcliffe—a lonely boy’s yearning for acceptance from the closest thing he had to a mother. His jealously simmered over into anger. When they got back to Redcliffe— _if_ they got back to Redcliffe…

“You don’t have a sister,” he told Alistair, wishing once again that the task of shattering his companions’ worlds fell to someone other than him.

“But I do! That is, I think I do. In Denerim. One of the washerwomen in Redcliffe told me. Goldana, she moved there after our mother died.” Alistair ducked his head, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything. Again. I could barely believe it myself.”

The falsehood made the demon’s deception seem doubly cruel. Alistair wasn’t dreaming about someone lost to him, like the others had. He was dreaming about someone who had never existed.

“Alistair, why don’t you take the children and your friend to wash up. Dinner’s almost ready,” the demon said. Somehow, Kier refrained from punching her in the face.

“Yes mom,” Alistair and his three limpets sing-songed in unison. Alistair started to lumber off, turned back to Kier. “You better do as she says. Goldana won’t let us eat until she’s checked under our fingernails and behind our ears.”

“She’s not your sister. These people aren’t your family. The Wardens are. Duncan. Me. And we don’t have time for this. We have a Blight to stop.”

Alistair’s smile dimmed. “I… I suppose you’re right. Let go, kids.” He pried at the child wrapped around his leg.

The Goldana-demon stepped between Kier and Alistair. “Don’t listen to him, brother. There’s always time for dinner, right?”

Glancing between Kier and Goldana, Alistair chewed on his lip. “I… no. I think I have to go. It’s my duty.”

“What about your duty to us?”

Kier closed his eyes. Necessity might make him the one to destroy Alistair’s happiness, but that didn’t mean he had to watch it crumble. “His duty is to kill things like you,” Kier said, and plunged his dagger through Goldana’s spine.

Alistair’s cry went from surprise to horror as the three things clinging to him became little more than tangling limbs and sharp teeth. By the time he had struggled free and come up to Kier’s side, Goldana had sloughed her mien and become a purple-skinned demon wrapped in thin chains of gold and little else.

“How did you know?” Alistair asked Kier as they dispatched the demons. “I should have known. How did you know?”

Kier didn’t have the heart to tell him how obvious it was, that there was no sister awaiting him in Denerim. “No sense of humor,” he said. “And she didn’t babble nearly enough to be related to you.”

“Hey!” was the last thing Alistair said before he faded away.

***

Following the defeat of Sloth, all Kier wanted to do was sleep. He was cozy, warm, and so tired from wandering the Fade for who knew how long. He curled closer around the pillow he was hugging, trying to ignore the discomforts—hard floor, eerie quiet, and an unpleasant stench laying thick on the back of his tongue.

“But they’re so precious! We should let them sleep.”

The whisper was harder to ignore, as was the dry response: “Precious or not, I don’t think they’ll thank you for ogling them.”

But it was Sten’s “ _Vashedan_ , I will wake them if you will not,” that spurred Kier to open his eyes.

His pillow, he realized, was not a pillow. His nose pressed against soft gold hair, lips resting on the warm skin at Alistair’s nape. He curled around his fellow Grey Warden in the same position they’d taken those nights in the Kocari Wilds, before they arrived in Lothering. Alistair’s arm held Kier’s in place around his waist, their fingers twining. Kier expelled a hard breath of surprise, and Alistair shivered.

He knew the moment Alistair awoke to their situation. The body pressed to Kier’s went stiff, and the skin under his lips heated. Shoving away would only increase the awkwardness. They’d fallen under the sway of a sloth demon. There was nothing to be embarrassed about. It wasn’t like they’d had a _choice_ about where they’d fallen. Had they?

As nonchalantly as he could manage, Kier rolled over and sat up. And if the glare he shot Solona promised murder if she so much as tittered, well, at least it quelled her to silence and smirks.

“Just tell me this harrowing chamber isn’t much farther,” he grumbled, getting to his feet and pulling a blushing Alistair up behind him.

As luck would have it, the harrowing chamber wasn’t far, but the bloody devastation they found in the antechamber wiped away Solona’s smirk.

“Cullen!” She rushed past Kier before he could stop her, ignoring Alistair’s ‘no, don’t!’ Before she could reach the bloody templar kneeling in the center of the room, the air thickened and the light dimmed, like being plunged into the murky waters of the Drakon. Solona jolted as though colliding with a wall and sank to her knees. Wynne groaned and tottered. Kier caught her, staggering sideways.

“What—?” He struggled to unsheathe a dagger while supporting Wynne. Bad enough to face a threat with two of their group reeling. Worse to be unarmed when it came.

“Anti-magic field,” Alistair said, peering at the lone templar with a mix of awe and respect. “Don’t ask me how he’s managed to hold it this long. I must have missed that day of Templar training.”

“You mean… he’s responsible for all that?” Kier asked, nodding at the wreckage of the room. Demons didn’t leave much besides grease smears, scorch marks, and the occasional ash pile when they died, but even so, the flagstones were black with dust and scorch and grease, all save for a pristine circle around the kneeling templar.

“Vashedan,” Sten murmured. “If this is what your order can manage with proper training, perhaps you are not entirely useless.”

“Why do I get the feeling that’s a collective you?” Alistair asked.

“Because it was.”

Wynne groaned and pressed a hand to her temple. “Maker help me, if you boys keep this up, I’ll take you both over my knee.”

Kier choked down on a snicker so she wouldn’t include him in her threat. “Wynne?”

“I’m fine. Just… startled. Go. Help him.” She pushed Kier toward Solona, whose hands passed over the air in front of her, seeking a way through nothing Kier could see.

“Cullen, it’s me. Can you let down the field? Can you let us through?”

The templar twitched, and his mumblings fell silent. He raised his head, staring at Solona with a mixture of disgust and yearning. His right hand clenched and unclenched in a gesture Kier knew too well—feeling for a weapon that wasn’t there. “You… you’re not real. You’re gone. You’re not real.”

“Solona…” Kier tried to pull her away. A hum rose under her skin, making his bones and teeth vibrate. He clenched his teeth against it and kept hold of her.

“I’m real. I came back, remember? We’re here to help. This is Kier. And Alistair. Grey Wardens, like me. We’re here to help.” Her voice cracked. “Please let me help you, Cullen.”

“No!” Cullen struck out with his arm, casting forth another wave of something that made Solona and Wynne whimper. “I don’t care whose face you wear, demon. Not even hers. I will not listen. I will not succumb to you!”

Alistair wrapped his arms around Kier, grasping Solona’s shoulders. His whisper tickled Kier’s ear. “We have to get the mages out of here before he does real harm.”

Kier nodded and added his strength to Alistair’s. “You heard him, Solona. You can’t help if you’re hurt. We need to stop Uldred and find Irving.”

The thrumming charge dissipated. Biting her lip, Solona nodded and allowed herself to be pulled away. But when Kier released her, she leaned forward, fingers hovering over the invisible shell. “I promise, Cullen. I’ll stop this. I’ll stop them. I’m so sorry you…” She pressed her fingers to her lips before her apology could break on a sob. Snatching up her fallen staff, she stalked up the stairs to the harrowing chamber. “Let’s go get Uldred.”

Bringing up the rear, Kier glanced back in time to see Solona’s templar pressing his hand to the place where her hands had been.


End file.
